Inheritance Trials
by Asviloka
Summary: Four houses. Four trials. Four years. One Heir. (AU. Smart!Overpowered!Ron)
1. Gryffindor

The Sorting came to a complete halt, the great hall falling into utter silence.

"What did you just say?!" Professor McGonagall protested, glaring sternly at the Sorting Hat.

"HOGWARTS!" the hat declared a second time.

"Everyone here is already attending Hogwarts," she said, a note of confusion entering her voice. "Would you please choose a house for him?"

The hat fell silent for a long moment. A minute. Two. The quiet turned to uncertain whispers as the students wondered just what was happening.

 _"This has never happened before."_

 _"The hat must be having us on."_

 _"Professor Dumbledore looks worried."_

 _"No, that's his thinking face."_

"GRYFFINDOR HUFFLEPUFF SLYTHERIN RAVENCLAW!" the Hat shouted.

Professor McGonagall groaned, but Professor Dumbledore stood before she could speak.

"Thank you. We shall treat this as a Gryffindor sorting for the time being, as that was the first word said. Go on, m'lad."

The boy, looking a bit shaken, removed the hat and went to join the cheering Gryffindors, while the other houses sent up a general murmur of protest. (Though notably less so from the Slytherins.)

The ceremony concluded smoothly, and there was no repeat of the hat's odd proclamation. That did nothing to slow the whispers and speculation running wild.

* * *

Ronald Weasley sat down between Harry Potter and Neville Longbottom, quite unsure how to feel. Perhaps it was the exceptional amount of sweets he'd consumed on the train, but he wasn't feeling entirely well.

"I've never even _heard_ of anyone being Sorted into all four houses," proclaimed the bossy muggleborn girl from nearby. "I wonder how that will work, will you be switching houses each term? Each year? Or will they come up with something else?"

"Better you than me, mate," Harry said, nudging Ron and grinning. "Now we're both famous! I won't get stuck with all the attention."

Ron felt himself blushing.

 _"That's him, the Four-House Boy!"_

 _"If he was Sorted to Ravenclaw, does that mean he's really clever?"_

 _"And he's pureblood,"_ a girl said, then promptly dissolved into giggles.

Ron turned to stare at her. She must be three years older than him, but she gave him a little wave and _winked_.

He knew his face was redder still, but he also felt a warm glow in his chest. The last Weasley son he may be, but he'd done something on his _first day_ that none of his brothers had. That no wizard in _living memory_ had.

He sat up straighter, puffed out his chest proudly. He was a Gryffindor, first and foremost, but if the Hat was to be believed, he also had the virtues of all the other houses.

Finally, he'd have the chance to show the world just what he was capable of.

* * *

"Win-gaar-di'm levi-oooooo-sa," incanted Ron. The feather drifted lazily from the desk, as though lifted by a gentle breeze, and fluttered across the intervening space to poke his rival on the nose. She glared at him, swatting the floating feather away with her wand, then flipped her hair and promptly levitated her own feather.

"Look here, everyone! Mr. Weasley and Ms. Granger have done it!"

Ron twitched his wand and leaned back, his feather flying smoothly in a looping curve suggestive of the word 'slowpoke' if you paid close attention.

Hermione's feather chased after it, but her spell wasn't nearly as precise. The feather looped a little too far from her control zone, wobbled, and then drifted to the floor as her hold over it evaporated.

Ron smirked. His feather swooped down, gently coaxed Hermione's back into the air, then gave it a shove back into reach for her.

She stared at him, mouth open, as though torn between appreciation for the kind gesture and offense that he'd insulted her by being better. He shrugged and winked, not caring what she thought. If she wanted to feel jealous and get angry because he'd helped her, he wasn't going to waste time worrying about it.

At the next desk over, Harry finally got his feather to wobble.

* * *

"A troll?!" Ron leapt to his feet. "Where is my rival? She wasn't in class."

"She was upset at something the Malfoy boy said at Potions," supplied another student helpfully. "She's been crying in the bathroom, I think."

"Which bathroom, particularly?" Ron asked, running through a mental map of the castle. As long as it was third floor or higher, it should be well out of the troll's range. Lower down. . . The passages from the dungeons let out in unexpected places sometimes. One in particular was right across from—

"The second-floor one behind the grey sliding panel," replied the student.

Ron grabbed his friends by the shoulder and glanced between them. "Harry, Neville. I've got to go save her. You coming?"

"Of course," Harry said, drawing his own wand. "Let's go!"

Neville looked terrified, but nodded his own agreement.

The trio of Gryffindors ran across the hall, evaded the teachers and prefects trying to impose order, and raced down the secret passage toward the second floor. From there, it was only three hallways until—

"Aaaaaaaaaaaaah!"

Harry couldn't run any faster, but Ron had grown up with Fred and George.

"Sorry, Harry," he said, then sprinted on at his top speed. Down the last hall, around the corner—

There, giant club in hand, stood the troll. It had just smashed open the door to the girls bathroom, eliciting the scream from within, as Ron rounded the corner.

"Oy, pea-brain!" he yelled, brandishing his wand. "Wingardium Leviosa!"

He lifted the troll and smacked its head into the ceiling repeatedly until it fell unconscious. Neville arrived just then and together they helped Ron's rival climb out over the snoring troll. Harry joined them a moment later, out of breath and disappointed to have missed the fun.

"Don't let Malfoy get to you," Ron told her, offering Hermione his handkerchief. "He's just a jealous git."

She sniffed and wiped her face. "I know. Thanks for saving me." Her face was bright pink. "I'm afraid I completely forgot my wand. All I could think was that I was about to die."

"Not everyone can react well in a crisis," Ron said magnanimously. "You certainly make up for it in other ways. You're the most brilliant witch in Hogwarts."

She smiled a little, handed his handkerchief back. "Thanks, Ron."

* * *

Albus Dumbledore struggled against the pull. The Mirror wanted to return to its place below, it wanted to escape his restraints. And it most of all wanted to be _rid_ of the foreign object currently contained within it.

Still, Albus Dumbledore was headmaster of Hogwarts, and that meant the Mirror had to obey him. Though it could resist, though it could fight back, it couldn't truly defy him. It could make his job harder, it could cause him irritation, but in the end, if he wanted it to show itself to two young students, by Merlin, it _would_ show itself to two young students.

* * *

"Blimey! Harry, Neville, you have to see this!" Ron exclaimed, tearing his attention away from the mirror long enough to grab Harry's arm and pull his friend over. Neville leaned forward to peer into the reflective surface.

"Where do you think that is?" Ron asked. "It's like a part of Hogwarts, but. . . so different too."

Neville shook his head. "It's St. Mungo's, but the specialty care ward. They. . . they. . ." And then he burst into tears, leaning forward to touch the mirror with such gentleness and intimacy that Ron felt a bit uncomfortable. Like he was intruding on something personal.

Harry leaned over to stare into the mirror himself, and took a shocked step back. "Impossible," he whispered, but stepped closer again and stared as though transfixed.

Ron let them look for a while, then pushed them gently aside. "I need to see it again," he said. "I'm sure it's a puzzle. Meant for me to solve."

He stared intently into the mirror, down the long golden corridor that felt so familiar and so strange at once.

Just as he felt he was near an epiphany, the mirror trembled. The movement disrupted the image, darkness spreading across it like midnight reflected in a pond. Then the whole _room_ shook, and the mirror trembled more violently still. Ron took a step back, Harry and Neville cried out with dismay, and then without warning the mirror simply vanished as though it had never been.

Ron thought he heard a quiet sigh, but when he turned around he saw no one.

* * *

Ron spent the entirety of the Christmas holidays trying to reproduce what he'd seen in the mirror, sketching and doodling the hallway he'd seen in every free moment. Harry had taken to following him around and suggesting activities to occupy them, apparently his friend didn't believe he ought to be dwelling on this.

Ron didn't mind being distracted, the image of the hallway seemed _incomplete_ somehow, and it bothered him more and more the longer he thought about it. He didn't know what was missing, but what he'd seen had been _wrong_.

He had to find that mirror again.

* * *

"Ron, come off it."

Neville didn't look well, as though his holiday had done nothing to improve his strain. Ron wasn't entirely sure what - his friend was pretty close-mouthed about his personal life - but something was bothering Neville.

"Doesn't it bother you? Not knowing what it meant?" he asked.

Neville looked at him like he was crazy. "Yeah, it does."

Only then did it dawn on Ron that if the mirror showed no reflection of the self, it may show a different reflection to each person. Give each their own puzzle. _St. Mungo's,_ Neville had said. The hallway was certainly not in St. Mungo's. Ron had been by it enough times to be familiar with its architecture.

"What did you see?" he asked quietly.

Neville looked away.

"It wasn't this hall, was it?" Ron asked, holding up one of his better attempts at drawing the mysterious scene.

Neville glanced at it, shook his head.

Ron stood. "If you don't want to tell me, you don't have to. Your puzzle is yours."

"It's not a puzzle," Neville said faintly. "It's a lie. One I want to believe so much it hurts."

Ron nodded, patted his friend's shoulder. "Let me know if I can help."

Neville nodded. "Thanks, Ron."

* * *

"No, what I saw wasn't anything like that," Harry said.

Ron stared at the page until he started to lose focus, trying to figure out what was missing. It wasn't his drawing skill that was to blame, the memory of the image held the same veneer of incompletion.

"Quidditch match this weekend," Harry pointed out. "Want to make banners?"

"No," Ron said, staring at the page. He absently started doodling crosshatching to shade in the more distant pillars, leaving blank sections to depict the glorious sunbeams shining in.

"This isn't good for you," Harry insisted. "You can't stay cooped up indoors all the time. What are you, a Ravenclaw?"

Ron nodded absently. "Yeah, I am, remember?"

Harry frowned. "Normally you are happy to be a Gryffindor," he said.

"Leave off, Harry. Go make your banner with Neville. I need to solve this."

"You've been staring at it for weeks! You're not going to figure anything out that way. If you could have solved it, you would have already. You're clever enough not to be stumped by something easy, so just leave it for a while."

Ron sat up straight, grabbed the parchment with his drawing, and sprinted for the door.

Harry stared after him, confused.

* * *

"HERMIONE! Has anyone seen Hermione?"

"She's in the library, I'm sure," Lavender said, rolling her eyes.

Ron sprinted out of the common room and down the halls. He didn't pay attention to the secret doors and shortcut stairways he slipped through, it was habit by now to subconsciously track which areas would be accessible from where at what times and choose the ideal route through them.

He burst into the library, earning himself a stern glower from Madame Pince.

"Hermione," he whispered, sliding in beside her. "I need your help."

She startled from her book, whipped her head around to stare at him. "Ron? What's wrong?"

"I've been trying to solve this, but I can't figure out what's missing."

He spread out the parchment on the table in front of him. Looking at it now, it was obvious his drawing talent was even less impressive than he'd thought. He felt briefly self-conscious showing it to Hermione, but his insistent need to understand was more pressing still.

"I don't understand," Hermione said, frowning. "It's a drawing of a hallway?"

"Yes, but where is it?"

Hermione shrugged. "It looks similar to Hogwarts architecture style. Like. . . see?" She pointed to the upper corners of the library. "The style of the ornamented scrollwork is very similar. Yours has more round corners, while this room has more lines and points, but overall the styles seem compatible."

Ron nodded slowly. "So it might be part of the school." He'd looked through every hall in the school, but found nothing. Except. . . "The third floor," he whispered. "The forbidden corridor. That's the only place I haven't looked."

Hermione looked worried. "You can't mean to go _there_!" she exclaimed. "It's off limits, you'll get in trouble."

Ron grinned. "I'm not planning to go in, just to see if it matches this." He picked up the parchment. "I can't leave a mystery like this unsolved."

Hermione frowned at him. "Where did you find that, anyway?"

"I drew it," Ron said. "After I saw it in an enchanted mirror."

Hermione blinked, then gathered up her books and stuffed them into her bag. "I'm coming too."

* * *

They didn't go straight to the corridor, stopping by the Gryffindor tower to drop off Hermione's books and collect Harry and Neville. Then they had to duck aside into a hidden storage room to wait while Filch stumped past, grumbling something about fanged frisbees.

The door was locked. Ron and Hermione each tried _Alohomora_ without success, until Harry suggested they both try at once. The combined strength of their spells was just enough, the door latch slipping free.

Beyond, there was a room. The scrollwork around the ceiling was thick and curling, but now he was looking Ron could see the similarities. If the library had been somewhat like the drawing, this was almost identical. Except the pattern was different. Round and intricate instead of thick and curved.

Before he could even begin to examine the walls, Harry and Neville had grabbed his arms and pulled him back out, Hermione slamming the door behind them.

"What?" Ron asked, frowning. "I wasn't done—"

"That monster was going to bite you in half!" Hermione shrieked.

Ron blinked. "Monster?"

"It was like a giant, _giant_ dog with three heads!" Neville said, his voice shaking. "Didn't you see it?"

Ron shook his head. He'd been completely absorbed in examining the ceiling.

"I am _not_ going back in there," Neville said, taking a step away from the door. "Dumbledore was serious."

"And now you've seen," Hermione said. "It's nothing like your mirror picture."

But her voice was less confident.

"What did you notice, Hermione?" Ron asked.

"I noticed a lot," she replied, but her voice rose in pitch. She was hiding something.

"Tell me."

"I. . ." Hermione sighed. "There was a trapdoor, on the floor behind the dog. Your hallway might be underneath."

"Of course," Ron said. "It's guarding the entrance."

"Ron," Harry said, "I really think you should drop this. You're obsessed! It can't be good for you."

"Or your grades," Hermione said smugly. She'd surpassed Ron as the top student for the first time the week previously, and it seemed she had no intention of letting him forget it.

It was true that his contemplation of the hallway had eclipsed his studying, but he didn't think that was important. This mystery was far more essential to understand than the magical alignment of transfigured mice.

"I'm going back in," Ron said firmly. "You don't have to come."

Harry sighed. "Of course we do," he said. "We're your friends."

"But we can't go right now," Hermione said. "First, we need to prepare."

"How do you prepare for something like _that_?" Neville asked.

Hermione grinned, a singularly unsettling expression. "Research!"

* * *

The Hogwarts library contained tens of thousands of books, and the magical organization system was one which did not make intuitive sense to muggle-raised Hermione.

Ron could find his way around it with a decent degree of accuracy, but even he lost his way sometimes. It was the single most comprehensive collection of wizarding information in Europe, and at times like these it was easy to feel the weight of so much knowledge.

Finding information on a particular breed of Cerberus was not simple. Separating facts from myth was not simple.

And none of it was _fast_.

They spent what time they could on the project over the following months, but Ron and Hermione were the ones who actually focused on the affair. Harry was struggling to keep his Potions grade at an acceptable level and seemed to care more about deepening his rivalry with Draco Malfoy than with helping solve Ron's mystery. Neville just wanted nothing to do with the dog or anything even related to the mirror.

As winter faded and spring began to show, even Hermione found reason to neglect the search. "I have to start revising for the exams, it's really important." She would look guilty when she saw Ron, but her time spent searching for a solution decreased significantly.

Finally, the day of the final quidditch match of the year, Ron decided he'd had enough. He didn't need any old books to tell him how to get past a giant dog. Even if the cerberus _was_ about five times as large, he'd beaten a troll easily enough. He could manage this.

With the rest of the school distracted, he'd have no one trying to find him for hours. It was the perfect opportunity.

* * *

Ron wasn't surprised to find Hermione sitting in the common room as he slipped out. He was surprised when she dropped her books and rushed after him.

"You're not planning to go alone, are you?" she hissed.

"We've researched for months, and it hasn't found any solution," Ron said. "I'm going, one way or another."

"Then I'm coming too."

For a moment, Ron felt guilty about sneaking off without Harry or Neville, but it would be better for them to enjoy themselves watching the match than dragged off into danger. Harry certainly had enough danger and tragedy in his life already, and Neville was fragile enough that Ron worried about pushing him too far.

This would be for the best.

* * *

In the end, just as they combined their _Alohomora_ spells to get through the door, Ron and Hermione combined their _Wingardium leviosa_ to lift the giant dog and carefully hold him away from the trapdoor. He barked furiously, slavering and straining toward them, but Ron was confident that the school was practically empty and no one would notice the sound.

Hermione flipped the trapdoor open with her foot, keeping her wand trained on the cerberus.

"It's dark," she said. "I can't tell how far down it goes."

Ron edged over to the dark opening and peered down. The faint light from the room above did little to illuminate the darkness.

"Lumos," Ron said, turning his wand down to the trapdoor. Hermione squeaked as the dog landed heavily on the ground, growling and stalking toward them.

Ron hastily spun back around. "Wingardium leviosa!"

Together they pushed it back up and away, but his heart was racing now. He found it harder to concentrate than usual.

"I couldn't see much," he said. "Did you?"

Hermione shook her head.

"Well, let's go then."

He eased his way around the trapdoor until he and Hermione stood on opposite sides.

"Three, two, one, _now_."

They each stepped forward, whipping their wands around to level on each other as they began to fall.

"Wingardium leviosa!"

Their fall slowed and they descended into darkness, the barking and growling of the dog fading slowly above them, the echoes growing fainter and fainter as they went down, down, down.

"I'm glad you came along, Hermione," Ron admitted. "I wouldn't have been able to do this alone." His voice bounced and echoed against the close walls, _alone, alone_.

"After this, we are definitely even," Hermione said, and he could hear the traces of fear in her voice. _Even, even_.

"You don't owe me anything," Ron insisted. "You would have snapped out of it and beaten that troll yourself."

Hermione laughed weakly. "I freeze when I panic. Not very useful reaction, but there it is. I'd be dead now, if not for you."

Ron shrugged, feeling uncomfortable, and glad the darkness hid his face. "You've more than repaid that. If anything, I should be in your debt. You're the only one who's stuck by me this whole time. Harry and Neville think I've lost my mind."

"I wouldn't rule out the possibility," she said. "After all, we are falling a very long way. How ever will we get back up?"

Ron didn't have an answer for that, but he felt strangely confident that it wouldn't be a problem.

"This was meant to be," he said. "I can feel it. This is what I've been meant to do, all year."

* * *

 _Author's Note:_

 _Well, this is why Shadow of the Past is delayed. I may have gotten distracted. Very distracted._

 _I have no excuse, except that I was listening to Philosopher's Stone and decided I wanted to do a less drastically AU story than usual, but also had some clever-ish ideas for later on. So while it will follow Year One moderately closely, the later years will be increasingly more divergent, when I have the time to write them.  
_

 _At current projections, this should be about three chapters to a year, and Year One should be done within the week. (I only need to finalize the Potions Riddle yet and write the very final scenes.) I don't plan to start year two right away, since I do have an update schedule to at least pretend to follow._

 _Since I put rather a lot of effort into the riddle, I think I'll post the last chapter on a substantial delay from the first two, to give people a chance to try and figure it out. It's quite obtuse, I'm terrible at writing clues, and it may well be impossible. I strongly believe it can be deduced from the hints, but things often look simpler from inside than outside. If anyone can think of digital prizes I could give out to anyone managing to solve such an obtuse puzzle, please let me know. _

_For now, I have a Shadow of the Past update to actually write this time, and a half-completed riddle to finish writing. Remember, I always welcome feedback, positive or negative. If you have the time, please do let me know what you think! :-)_


	2. Gauntlet

Their eventual landing was soft, tumbling gently into a tangle of what felt like rubbery leaves.

"Lumos," they cast in near unison. Light flared up, and they both stiffened involuntarily.

They lay in the largest patch of Devil's Snare that Ron had ever seen. Reaching easily from wall to wall of the deep shaft, the plant was already beginning to come awake, its tendrils wriggling and reaching for the intruders.

Ron tried to bat away the vines creeping toward him, but that only agitated the leaves beneath him. Coils of greenery slid up around his stomach, his legs, twisting and tightening.

A leaf wound itself around his wand and he let go instinctively, drew his hand away, and only as the light vanished did he realize his mistake. Now he was helpless, weaponless. He reached around, hoping to find his wand, but felt only more twisting writhing vines and too-agile leaves that tried to twist around him even as he touched them. He jerked his hand away.

The feel of the plant slithering around him made it hard to think. He leaned forward, keeping his chest and hands clear, but that wouldn't last for long. It was dragging him down, slowly cocooning his lower body, tightening and pulling and reaching.

He shivered violently, fear overtaking him in a flood. He would be strangled, suffocated, slowly consumed until nothing remained. Devil's Snare was one of the most insidious and dangerous plants they'd studied during the first year, and that was a single vine of it in a careful enclosed pot.

This much would kill them both in minutes.

"Standard solution is fire," Hermione said, her voice trembling, and Ron saw she was terrified too. "How much farther down do you think the shaft is? If we break the hold, will we have time to recast _wingardium_ without hitting bottom?"

"I don't care," Ron said. "Just get us out of this!" The urge to struggle and try to fight his way free was becoming overwhelming. He didn't have his wand. There was absolutely nothing he could do.

It was a supreme effort of will not to thrash wildly, but that would only entangle him quicker. When its prey was still, the Devil's Snare worked slowly and methodically. Only when it sensed movement would it lash out with its full deadly speed.

"Hermione?" he asked, fighting down the panic. He turned and looked around again, but his wand remained lost somewhere under the writhing mass of greenery. Hermione's glowing wand cast the scene in intense light and deep shadow.

Vines and leaves slithered over Ron's stomach and up his chest, reaching and pulling, steady and irresistible. Some of the vines were thicker than his arms, yet they moved with lithe and sinuous flexibility.

He wouldn't be able to break himself free if he tried. A smaller plant could be broken free of, but one this old and strong. . .

"Lumos Solem!" Hermione called out, and the white-blue light at the tip of her wand flared and shifted. Gold sunlight flooded out, so bright Ron had to squint against it. The vines around him loosened, but did not release, nor did they stop their slow advance across his body.

Then, finally, he caught sight of his wand. Beneath a leaf that recoiled from the light, lying with one thin vine wrapped loosely over it. He lunged, dove forward into the mass, reached out and grasped it even as his sudden movement agitated the plant into motion. A vine lashed out, coiling around his neck and shoulder, his wrist and his hand, wrapping him quickly and tightly.

"Lumos Solem!" Ron called, twitching his wand and hoping the minimal amount of movement he retained was sufficient. Sunlight burst from his wand as well, and this time he felt a definite slowing of the plants movements. Its smaller leaves and tendrils began slowly retracting, coiling themselves up.

 _It hybernates during the day,_ Ron realized, memory of a lecture coming back to him now his panic was subsiding. He nearly laughed with relief. Trust Hermione to recall such an obscure herbology fact and figure out how to exploit it.

All they had to do was keep still and wait, and the plant would fold itself up to rest. As long as they didn't draw its attention, they'd be able to slip down through it.

"Hermione, you're a genius," he said, with heartfelt relief.

She rotated her wand to point at him. "This could be rough," she said. "If one of us falls through first, we may not be able to aim through all this."

The coils around his legs were sliding free, the plant drawing back. Ron slid down a few feet, then was halted by the thick vine around his waist.

"We can't let up the sunlight spell until we're through," Ron said. "Otherwise, it'll wake back up and eat us."

"But if we fall separately, we won't be able to slow each other."

Ron's attention trailed along the thick vine that had twisted around him, then off deeper into the tangle.

"We could tie ourselves together," he suggested. "If we move really slow, we could get close enough together. Cut this vine free and lash ourselves to either end. Devil's Snare is strong enough to handle our weight, clearly."

He moved as he spoke, slowly, as though swimming in extreme slow motion. Leaves and vines twitched at his touch, wrapped lazily around him only to slide away a moment later.

Hermione copied him, drawing herself toward him through the plant's tangled mass.

About a third of what he could see was tucked up against itself now, and he could see they'd descended another several feet through the thick tangle of plant. It seemed to grow right out of the walls.

"I wonder how long this has been here?" he mused.

"Long enough," Hermione said. She reached out her free hand, and he clasped it in his own. "Alright. Hold very still."

She twisted her wand around. "Diffindo!"

The vine circling his middle _screamed_ , a high hissing screech that cut off as suddenly as it had begun. Ron tugged it free, tied its thick section more securely around his waist, and tossed the middle section to Hermione as she recast her _Lumos solem_.

Before she'd even finished tying it, she slid through the last layer of vines with a faint squeak. Ron felt her weight pull against his end, and he readied himself, if they fell free, he had to be able to cast at a moment's notice—

"It's alright, the floor is right here," Hermione called up. Her weight lessened, and a moment later Ron slid through the last of the snare himself, dropping a short way to the stone floor.

For a moment he lay there, breathless, laughing with relief. Hermione helped untie the vine and he tossed it away. Once he'd regained his composure, he turned to survey their new surroundings.

They stood in a round rough-hewn stone shaft, a single doorway leading onward. Ron stared at it.

"I think Harry was right," he said slowly. "I may have taken this too far."

"Too late to back out now," Hermione said. She shut off her sunlight and replaced it with the normal wandlight. Ron wanted to keep his, but the brighter light required more focus to maintain and he didn't know what else they may have to face down here. He followed her example.

* * *

The second room was full of flying keys.

They seemed territorial, pecking at each other and swarming in small flocks to down individuals. Eight keys lay scattered on the floor, their wings bent and fluttering weakly. Another dozen flew warily at low altitude, occasionally falling before catching themselves.

As they watched, one on the floor regained its flight and swooped up to join a small pack attacking a big silvery key. The bigger key thrashed about, clipped the wings of two of its assailants, then succumbed to their combined assault and clattered to the floor.

At first, the keys seemed content to fight among themselves, but as Ron and Hermione reached the center of the room, their attention began to shift. Singly or in pairs, keys swooped down to harass them, chirping and bumping against them aggressively.

The closer they got to the door, the more agitated the swarm became. They stopped infighting at once, swooping in with increasingly painful force, trying to drive the intruders back toward the first room.

Ron retreated a few steps, and the keys lost interest in him, redoubling their attacks on Hermione until she too retreated. So long as he and Hermione remained well away from the door, the flying keys paid the humans no heed.

"This will be tricky," Ron muttered. He directed his wandlight toward the door, leaning forward to examine it. Ten locks, each with its own keyhole, secured the exit. "Assuming all the keys we need are in here, we'll have to catch the correct ones, withstand their fellows' attacks, and unlock the door. I don't suppose you know a shield charm?"

He'd read about the shield charm. A very powerful and versatile spell, but not a simple one.

Hermione grimaced and shook her head. "I wasn't planning to start on those until third year."

Ron nodded. "Same. Maybe we should make that a priority next year."

"I'm sure we'll know better than to go down corridors whose sole advertisement is 'a very painful death' next year," Hermione said. She hesitated, then added, "But, you're right. We need to know the shield charm as soon as possible."

They fell silent, contemplating their current challenge.

"We could levitate them to unlock the door at a distance," Hermione suggested. "It would take more time, but be safer."

Ron shrugged. "Worth a try. Wingardium leviosa."

But this time their plan didn't go very smoothly. The key he'd targeted slipped free almost at once, before he'd moved it more than a few inches. Repeated attempts were more or less equally ineffective.

After sticking light to the walls so they didn't need to maintain a _Lumos_ the whole time, they tried combining their effords. But even with them both focusing together on the same target, the keys were able to slip away just as easily.

"Petrificus!" Hermione called, and one key stopped flapping its wings and fell to the ground.

Ron grinned and joined in.

The grounded keys started to revive before they'd cleared half the swarm, whatever magic repaired them after their own in-fights also serving to break them free of the binding jinx.

Ron began to feel the strain of so much rapid spellcasting. He sat down, looked over the downed keys and the door to see if there were any obvious matches. He chose five that seemed promising, rested another minute, then started for the door.

The keys swarmed him, trying to push him back, but Hermione ran forward to join him and that forced the attacking swarm, already reduced in size by their petrificus spells, to divide itself still further. Ron handed Hermione three of the keys he'd chosen, snatched another promising-looking one out of the air as it swooped to attack him, and rushed for the door.

Two of his guesses were right, the locks clicking and vanishing as he turned the keys. Hermione got one. Once their locks were open, the keys rose unsteadily to resume their attack.

The duo retreated. Ron set about gathering up the fallen keys that hadn't recovered yet, checking them against the locks in case any of them were a better match he'd overlooked. Then he frowned down at the pile of limp or fluttering keys before him.

"Is there any way we could keep these out of commission longer?" he asked. There wasn't a door on the entrance, or he'd have thrown them out into the first room.

Hermione looked at them a long moment, then grimaced. "It feels cruel, but I could make a fire. Try to burn off the wings so they can't move."

Ron hesitated, then nodded. "I don't have a better idea."

She whispered an incantation, then knelt down and deposited a ball of bright blue flame on the ground. Adding several more, she soon had a sizeable blaze going. It burned on nothing, neither growing nor shrinking, and never varied from its gelatinous form or vibrant blue colour.

Ron hadn't seen that spell before. He'd never heard of a spell that made solid blue flame. His already high estimation of his friend and rival rose.

A clattering from the pile of keys alerted him to an escape attempt, and he grabbed the weakly fluttering key and tossed it toward Hermione's flames. It chirped wildly, but the more it tried to fly away the faster the flames licked up its delicate wings. With a final effort, it flopped to the ground with a dull clink and lay there, still chirping weakly.

Ron felt momentarily overcome by guilt, but only until he remembered how aggressively the keys had assaulted them. He gathered up the remaining pile of petrified keys and tossed them onto the flames, then set about petrifying each remaining flying key.

Hermione joined in a few minutes later, though Ron could see tears in her eyes. The feeble, desperate chirping from the growing pile of wingless keys was clearly affecting her.

They systematically demolished the aggressive swarm, located the necessary keys to progress, and unlocked the remaining seven locks.

* * *

Albus Dumbledore looked up in alarm. He checked a few of his instruments with a quiet frown. Severus, tasked with watching Quirinus, remained at the Quidditch match. Harry Potter was also in attendance, along with Neville Longbottom.

So who had just passed the First Door?

Albus strode swiftly from the room, beckoning for Fawkes to follow. If he'd been mistaken, if for once it was _not_ the Defence professor who was the threat, he had no time to waste.

Not for the first time, he wondered at the coincidental timing of it all. The Gauntlet had appeared, ready to protect the Stone, the same year that both potential Prophecied children would be attending the school, the same year Nicholas Flamel suddenly decided his Stone needed guarding, the same year that Quirinus returned so very different to take the cursed position.

Whatever Hogwarts was up to, Albus Dumbledore would figure it out. And he sincerely hoped to do so before anyone was hurt.

* * *

The third room was a chess set, in a losing position.

Ron climbed the steps to a balcony overlooking the board and clearly saw that his side, black, was on the edge of defeat. If it was white's move, the game was as good as over. If it was his move. . .

He considered, trying to find a way to win, but the absolute best he could come up with was a draw. _If_ his opponent made mistakes.

His three remaining pawns were blocked, he was down to a knight and rook against the enemy's queen, and his king sat in the middle of his back row like a sitting target while the enemy king was coming dangerously close to the most defenceless of his trio of pawns.

He shouted a command to his pieces, but no one moved. It must be white's move. Game over.

But to his surprise, the king turned and bowed to him, stepping off the board and holding out his crown. Ron frowned, then understood.

"Hermione, take that space," he called. She collected the crown, which looked quite strange on her, and took the place of the former king. Ron repeated his command to the bishop, who didn't move.

Hermione echoed his command, and the bishop strode along its diagonal as ordered.

Ron had to fight down the anxiety of having Hermione in the game. It had been an instinctive decision, but with her as the king he couldn't risk losing. He had to measure every move, even though he sent her aggressively across the board to help dance around the enemy queen and try to pick off the white pawns.

The white queen tried again and again to corner Hermione, glowering as though it were a personal affront to have her lasting so long, but Ron was quite good at chess. Though he'd started at a disadvantage, they were able to survive long enough.

"Fifty moves," he declared, relieved. "No captures, that's a stalemate."

The pieces moved around, setting a new position. This was more evenly matched in material, but his position was disadvantageous. Ron groaned. So he had to actually _win_ a match to move forward. He'd hoped surviving it would be good enough.

It took three more long, careful matches - three more draws - before he finally got lucky and seized the advantage. From there, it was a simple matter of trading material and maneuvering his opponent into a trap.

Finally, the white king tossed down his own crown and stood aside. The door beyond him opened at a touch.

* * *

Ron recognized the troll at once. It had a flattened sort of head from where he'd smacked it into the ceiling the first time, and it whimpered a bit when it saw them.

Ron kept his glowing wand trained on the creature, but it crouched and growled and sidled away from them. He started across the room, and the troll made no move to stop him.

"Ron, look at this," Hermione said from behind him.

"Just tell me," Ron said, keeping his eyes and wand on the troll.

"There are runes laid out in the floor. Spirals and patterns, I don't recognize them."

"Alright, come up here beside me."

Hermione was trembling, and Ron remembered that the last time she'd encountered this troll she'd been terrified enough to forget her magic entirely.

"It's alright," he said firmly. "Keep your wand pointed straight at it. Don't be afraid. It's just a troll, and obviously not very well trained either. As far as it knows, we're its handlers and we have every right to be here. If it comes toward you or makes an aggressive move, throw some of that blue fire at it and shout 'bad' or 'no' like you would a misbehaving ghoul. As long as you convince it that you're in charge, it won't attack."

Hermione raised her wand, but Ron could see she was still nervous.

"I'll be quick," he promised. He gave the troll one last glare, as though to instruct it to be good, then turned to examine the floor.

As Hermione had said, it was inlaid with faint impressions of runes. He recognized only a few - that one meant change, that one repeated several times was for fire, this one represented healing, that one change.

He noticed that they were linked by thin lines, leading one to the next, branching out until the whole pattern was connected into overlaid spirals, but not every connection was part of the main one.

"It's a spell circuit," he realized, then stepped back to the beginning and touched his wand to the first symbol in line. It began to glow faintly, illuminating the three lines branching out from it.

"But what does it _do_?" Hermione asked, turning to him.

Ron shrugged. "I was planning to start studying Runes in third year."

Hermione grimaced. "Me too."

The troll snorted and took a few steps toward them. Hermione squeaked and jumped, but Ron straightened and leveled his wand at it.

"Back," he ordered sternly. "Stay."

The troll retreated and crouched down again, waggling its ugly head from side to side. It grunted irritably, but didn't advance.

"They're really no big deal, trolls," Ron explained to her. "Bloody hard to train, but live a long time for all that. Expensive to hire out, but this one seems to be more or less wild. I wonder where it came from and how it managed to slip into the castle."

Hermione shook her head. "I don't know these," she admitted, her attention back on the floor. "I haven't even bought a book on runes. I'll have to study that next year."

"I know a few, but not enough." Ron frowned, glanced back at the three options. "That one means light or illumination, I think. Can you watch the troll? I need to examine these."

Hermione stepped up beside him bravely, and Ron smiled encouragingly at her.

He followed the lines of each branching, but quickly got lost as each branch split again, then again, then looped back to rejoin one or another line of runes somewhere farther down the pattern. A few led to dead ends, but almost all of them ended up twisting back together in the end. Three routes, then one final rune just beneath the blank wall where the door should be.

Ron didn't know the first thing about spell circuitry. He didn't know what kind of unpleasant effects could be hiding down the 'wrong' branches. Probably nothing deadly, but both the first two rooms had potential for injury so he couldn't assume anything.

He'd have bruises from those keys for days and doubted he'd ever be able to look at Devil's Snare without trepidation again.

"Hermione, trade places with me. Look at each line carefully, see if you can figure out anything at all about them. I'm stumped. What we need to do is choose a path to connect this door to the endpoint across the room, but I don't know enough runes to choose a safe one."

He stood and glowered at the troll, who had taken to snorting disconsolately and staring about at the walls and ceiling as though perfectly content to crouch in the corner.

"The first rune is that circle thing," Hermione said.

"That means. . . Action? I don't remember, but it's used at the start of most spell circuits I've seen. The one next to it with the three branches means Illumination," Ron said. "I don't know the other two."

"And the one at the end?"

"I don't know."

Hermione paced back and forth across the sprawling design.

"The beginning one shows up on six other branches," she said. "Here, here, here, and those two next to each other, and that one there. The ending one is paired with them on this branch and this one, but not on the others."

Ron blinked. "So if we use any of those other four routes, it'll start a new chain without ending the last one?"

Hermione shrugged. "If that's what the final symbol means."

Ron didn't know, but guessed it might be. "So that eliminates four out of. . . two dozen branches?"

"We could make a path that includes both these stop and start again ones." Hermione pointed out. "Or either, or neither."

"Doesn't narrow it down too much," Ron grumbled.

"Illumination shows up again only twice more," Hermione said. "It follows right after stopping and beginning on this route, and comes fourth-to-last on this path."

Ron straightened, looked back and forth between the troll and the blank wall.

"Switch with me," he said, excitedly. "I have an idea."

He looked over the runes, until he found the one that he thought meant fire. It showed up on several paths, but on all but three of the instances it was followed by a large squarish rune whose meaning he didn't know. One, halfway across the room, led to three separate branches. Two of them identical, and stretching out to either side.

"This one is a barrier, I'd bet anything on it!" Ron said, pointing. "It splits the room in half with a veil of fire, I think. That will keep the troll contained, so it won't follow us out."

"Brilliant." Hermione sounded very relieved. "I was afraid we'd have to keep intimidating it all night."

"There are only two routes that connect to this," Ron said, his excitement growing, "and one of them uses the stop and start you found."

He touched his wand to each branch, guiding the light along the track he'd chosen, twisting and circling across the floor. He had to get quite near the troll for one of the sections, but it just sidled away uneasily. He reached the triple branch that represented the flame wall and stepped back across, then activated the two side runes.

Light flared across the lines, twisting into a curving, undulating barrier of solid gold light, flickering with flame. The troll moaned, but it was no longer clearly visible through the barrier.

"Brilliant!" Hermione repeated. She grinned, then pocketed her wand and joined Ron next to their barrier. "So, where next?"

"If we wanted to hit your second stop-start pair, there are two ways toward it," Ron said. "Or if we wanted to avoid it, there are three safe routes yet."

"Let's rule out anything with fire," Hermione said. "I doubt they'd use it for multiple purposes in the same room. If we choose the wrong one, it may trap _us_."

"Good thinking," Ron said, and they each set about following the twining paths of runes. Two more were eliminated for use of the fire rune, but that still left them with three to decide between.

"Only one stops and starts again," Hermione said, hesitantly. "Do you think that's a good thing, or a bad thing?"

"It was used to indicate that everything prior goes into these barriers," Ron said, waving at the wall of flame, "and that a new section of spell begins after. The question is whether we need one more spell or two to get out of here."

Hermione nibbled at her lip, frowning. "I don't know! It's so frustrating. I ought to be able to solve this easily. If only I'd studied farther ahead."

Ron grinned ruefully. "Yeah."

Hermione sighed. "Let's just try the stop-start one. If it's wrong, we'll deal with the consequences."

Ron set about activating that line of runes, twisting around toward the door. The moment he hit the stop-start, a grinding crunching sound came from the wall at the end, so loud and sudden that he jumped and nearly dropped his wand.

"What was that?" Hermione asked.

Ron shrugged, his heart racing. "It didn't sound good," he said. Frowning, he continued the route until it reached the end. A gateway appeared in the solid rock, barred by metal spikes reaching up through the ground and into the top, solid and looking quite impenetrable.

"I guess that's what it was," he said, disgruntled. "I don't suppose you know how to transfigure iron spikes to something less solid?"

Hermione shook her head. "I can do steel or silver, but I don't know the equations for iron."

"Transfiguration is so finicky," Ron agreed, frowning at the bars. "If this even is iron. I wouldn't put it past them doing something tricky with them."

"Can we turn it off?" Hermione asked.

Ron shook his head. "I don't know how to deactivate magic circuits, we'll just have to wait until it runs down. Shouldn't take more than a few minutes."

Hermione looked at him fearfully. "They run down? If the door only exists because of the circuit, then how will we get back out?" she whispered.

Ron shook his head slowly. "I don't know. But it's not like we could get out with the Devil's Snare or that giant drop. Nothing particularly important is in these first rooms. Either there's another way out farther on, or. . ."

"Or we're already trapped down here," Hermione finished.

Ron swallowed and nodded. He stood by the beginning rune, waiting for the circuit to run out of power. Hermione inspected the final section.

"This one matches the last part of the one we used," she called. "I bet it's the doorway-making but without the spikes."

"Good," Ron said. "Keep track of where that goes. We'll need to get this re-active in a hurry."

"Why?"

"That troll will be very unhappy at being locked in a small space along with fire," Ron said, grimacing. "I doubt any amount of fear of us will keep it from rampaging around wildly."

"Oh," Hermione said weakly. She glanced at the flame wall with trepidation. "And we can't just let the second set run down without the first?"

Ron shook his head. "They're all linked together. If I knew how to selectively deactivate runes, we wouldn't have to wait for it to run out in the first place."

"Oh! It's starting to fall," Hermione said. The last few runes were losing their light, the gateway slowly dripping back into a solid stone wall. Then the wall rattled and vibrated again, the spikes presumably retracting, and the fire barrier flickered and faded.

With a roar, the troll charged out, banging off walls and jumping up and down, smacking its big hands off anything in reach.

"Wingardium leviosa!" Ron and Hermione shouted, but the troll was moving too fast. They missed.

Hermione shrieked and fled back to the key room. Ron managed to start the first two runes, but then the troll was charging and swinging its club and Ron knew he couldn't get his wand up in time, he had only seconds to live—

"Wingardium leviosa!" Hermione screamed, and the club wrenched out of the troll's grasp.

"Bad, bad bad!" Hermione shouted shrilly, the club whacking the troll around the face and chest. She advanced, wand conducting the club as she continued to scream at the troll. "Back, and don't do that again! Bad!"

The troll growled and swatted at the club, but its motions were slowing, the combination of Hermione's sharp words and the club breaking its momentum and dulling its rage. It fell back before the onslaught, shrinking away, returning to its submissive crouch in the corner.

"That's right," Ron snapped at it, his heartbeat beginning to approach normalcy again. "Stay."

He quickly activated the runes, guiding the path through to the fire barrier, skipped past the spikes, and onto the section Hermione pointed out. The doorway formed, unobstructed this time.

"Remind me never to go off on a dangerous and foolhardy trip without you," Ron said to Hermione. "You've saved me more times today."

Hermione blushed. "Someone has to look out for you."

Ron grinned at her. They were both breathing heavily, calm slower in returning than their good spirits. Together, they crossed into the next room.

* * *

Ron groaned. "Potions?"

Two dozen bottles stood on an ornate stone bench. Eight were medium size, eight large, and eight small, though the shapes were varied. Half were brown glass, half green, but all opaque enough that the contents could barely be seen.

They seemed to be aligned haphazardly, with no clear pattern. Large, small, medium medium medium large. . . Green green brown green brown brown green brown green. . .

The opposite door was an empty archway, but Ron didn't trust it. "I bet the moment we get close, something bad happens," he muttered.

"Like with the keys," Hermione agreed. "But I don't know what we're supposed to be doing."

Ron frowned. The room was much smaller than the others they'd passed through, and its architecture was distinct. While it followed the same general trend, the patterns were neither the thick round ones of the golden hall nor the intricately circular patterns of the previous three rooms, instead feathered with patterns of lines and angles.

It contained only the table with the potions, a wide gateway at either end. He crossed to the table and examined it closely.

"Something's missing," he said, pointing. The potion bottles were arrayed in four rows, staggered, but the front row had a conspicuous empty space, the bottles spaced around it.

"I feel like we should try leaving anyway," Hermione said. "It would be hilarious if there was this complicated-looking puzzle, when the real answer is just to walk out."

Ron hesitated. "That doesn't sound right," he mused. "I think this whole place is a test. They wouldn't have made it so one whole puzzle was 'just ignore the obvious and walk past'."

He frowned at the rows of potions. None seemed out of place since they were in a seemingly random jumble. There was no system to it, no pattern he could simply complete. Round bottle, square bottle, round, hourglass square hourglass triangle oval square. . .

No pattern.

"I'm going to try," Hermione declared, and before Ron could stop her she marched toward the exit.

A barrier of black flame rose up before her, hissing and snarling. She jumped back with a small squeak.

At the same moment, purple flames ran along the wall, blocking the way back, and bright gold flames wrote out a long section of words on the wall behind the bench.

 _One in two will aid you_  
 _One in three distract_  
 _One in four for turning back_  
 _One in six will bring you harm_  
 _One in eight shall guide you on_  
 _One in twelve to end your quest._

 _Beginnings to move onward, unless you choose to guess._  
 _39 to carry on, 18 more to return. The key is writ disguised, unclear, the path beginneth here:_

Those words were written in smaller letters, like a preface. The remaining words covered all the rest of the wall.

 _ **A hero bears power, justice, and death; all kept in these potions midst water and earth.**_

 _ **Darkness hides the future, whether good or ill. Life conceals much hardship, but offers a way out.**_

 _ **You're safer far with angles than ovals, rounds, or curves, but not of questing onward - chances there are small.**_

 _ **Zealously ignored extremes could kill, or render aid. Living seems certain when your receptacle is larger, equal risk brings surer advancement.**_

 _ **Keep diligently learning everything if you just seek to know. Refuse the quest and your knowledge doesn't fade. Just proceed without hesitation and quest another day.**_

 _ **If you would choose a potion by height, none is greater than the others. Unsafe waits near harmless.**_

 _ **If by line you would decide, your best choice is home or very far away. Picking from isolated corners would often be just fine, but there also quietly waits the potion to end your chances here.**_

 _ **Three and three are safe to drink, three and three again will stall your journey back.**_

* * *

"There's not enough information," Hermione declared with a frown. "There's no clear data points to begin from, there's nothing substantial here. It's just comparing arbitrary things to other arbitrary things, where it isn't just pure incomprehensible rubbish! This isn't a solvable riddle."

"Calm down, Hermione," Ron said, though he couldn't see a solution either.

"All it does is narrow it down. Some medium-sized bottles will help, while one will kill. Even using every bit of information they give, there's not enough here to make a decision. And what does it mean, that a potion bears 'justice'? Power and Death are at least reasonable, but there's _no such thing as a potion of justice_!"

"Relax. We'll figure it out. Let's start at the beginning."

"The first line is dumb," Hermione insisted.

"Then skip it for now. Darkness hides the future, whether good or ill," Ron read aloud.

"Darkness are the brown 'darker' bottles, life are the green," Hermione said promptly. "The most useful and most dangerous ones will be brown, while the green ones are distracting or annoying, though one or more could help us retreat past the first trials. Maybe."

"Safer far with angles—"

"But not of moving onward," Hermione said. "It narrows down the odds, but doesn't help distinguish. I'm telling you, it's a vague useless riddle. Unsolvable."

Ron reached for a square bottle, but it didn't budge. "And it's stuck to the table," he said.

Hermione tried lifting a large oval bottle, but that one didn't move either. "How peculiar," she mused, and Ron was pleased to see her curiosity overpower her frustration.

She tried each bottle in turn, and only two on the left and the two in the center front moved, sliding along the surface. "Is it a puzzle?" She slid one bottle forward, and as soon as it entered the central diamond it lifted free of the surface.

"Ah," she said. "Interesting."

Ron tried, but none of the bottles would move.

Hermione replaced the bottle as he was pushing, and the moment her bottle touched the space his slid free so abruptly he nearly toppled over.

"Alright," he said, recovering his balance and getting out a piece of parchment. "So it's a sliding puzzle, as well as a riddle. All the bottles have to be on the board for any of them to move. We can only move them into adjacent diamonds, and can only remove them from this front central spot."

Hermione tried a few things, sliding bottles back and forth, and nodded. "Looks accurate."

"Does the way they slide seem relevant to the clues at all?" Ron asked.

"No, but we should write down the order they're in now before we move them too far," Hermione said. "Several of the clues mention their location, but once we start mixing them up that won't be any help."

Ron noted down each bottle's description and location, sketched out a quick duplicate of the layout.

"There's still not enough information," he said, frowning up at the words hovering behind the potions puzzle. "None of that tells us how to determine anything."

Hermione grimaced. "Maybe we need to drink one at a guess, and then once we have that information the rest will make sense."

"We can't risk that!" Ron exclaimed. "Some are _deadly_!"

"One," Hermione said. "One of these specifically," she pointed them out. "So we choose from a different group. Like the ones that don't help or harm particularly much."

She began rearranging the potions, and Ron saw a flicker out of the corner of his eye.

"Wait!" The number had changed. The flaming 39 had shifted slightly, to a 38. "Put it back," he said, and the number incremented back up as Hermione returned the bottle to its initial location.

"Interesting," Hermione said. She began moving the bottles rapidly. The number flicked downward until it reached zero, then it stopped. She continued moving bottles, but the number remained zero. She inverted the motions she'd done, and once she'd reversed them completely the number once again showed 39. She moved a different bottle, and the number remained the same.

"It only counts down if we start from this particular bottle," she said, after several more sets of rapid movement. "The one in the upper left. I wonder if that's significant."

She performed several more series of rapid switching, but though the counter ran down again, nothing else happened differently.

"It _is_ a puzzle," she said, frowning. "And I bet the solution is to bring the correct bottle to the center here where it can be removed."

"But there are hundreds of move combinations possible," Ron said. "What are we going to do, try all of them and see if it changes?"

"There must be a way to deduce it from the clues. It says it right there, the answer is written unclear."

Ron paced before the table, staring at the diamond array, then at the riddle, then back. This was not going to be easy.

* * *

 _Author's Notes:_

 _Alright, everyone! This is your official disclaimer that I am bad at being clever. This riddle took me all week to devise, hours upon hours of crumpled pages and charts and graphs and notes, time when I should have been writing any one of my already ongoing projects, but I wanted this to be legitimate. So, now that I've gone to an excessive amount of effort, rather than just post the solution in-story, I'm going to post all the rules and puzzle layout. If anyone can solve it, I'll post the next chapter right away. If not, I'll probably post the next chapter sometime next month. It's a tricky one, I hope, but not too tricky (I hope)._

 _To assist in this quest, I've made a .psd diagram with the bottles in their default layout: [sta . sh / 0165x4g174ty] I'll also post a link in my forum, with a dedicated thread for this if y'all want to collaborate to figure it out. I suspect I'm too 'young' an author to do something meta like this with any success, but what can I say? I'm ambitious. :-3_

 _If it's just too obtuse to solve as-is, you can choose to drink a potion and I'll reply with what happens. (This has no effect on what happens in the story, just a way for you to get additional information. Ron and Hermione's solution is already written completely.) I honestly believe it can be solved as-is with no additional input, but like I said, it's obtuse, so the option is here if you get stumped._

* * *

 _Large round green | small square green | medium round brown | medium hourglass green | medium square brown | medium hourglass brown  
 _Free space_ | large triangle green | large oval brown | large square green | small spiral brown | medium triangle green | large oval green  
Large hourglass brown | small spiral green | medium oval brown | large round brown | medium spiral brown | small hourglass green  
Medium triangle brown | small oval green | large spiral brown | _escape space_ | small triangle green | small square brown | small round green_


	3. Greatness

Ron frowned at the clues before him. The introduction seemed strange, the wording of several lines bizarre. Hardly any of it fit to rhyme or rhythm of any sort.

"A hero bears power, justice, and death," Hermione muttered, considering the arrayed bottles. "Power could be represented symbolically by large bottles. There are three words and three sizes. Justice is in between power and death? Does that mean the safe bottle is medium size?

"All kept in these potions midst water and earth," she continued. "But there's no water anywhere around, and the barriers are both flame. It doesn't make sense."

"The bottles are brown and green," Ron said, considering the third line of the riddle. "Darkness and life?"

"Oh, that's good," Hermione said. "So the brown bottles 'hide the future' while the green 'conceal much hardship, but offer a way out'. That's some progress. And the next line is pretty obvious."

"Angles are safer than rounder bottles, but there's less chance of them helping us move onward. The next line seems to say the same thing, the greater the opportunity to succeed the bigger the risk."

"What about this 39?" Hermione asked, sliding the large round bottle into the empty space, as it incremented down to 38, then moving it back and the flaming number flickered back into its original 39. "Could we deduce the sequence of moves required just from that, maybe?"

"Perhaps," Ron said, frowning. "But there are a lot of possible moves. It seems like it would be hard to narrow down."

Hermione made a frustrated sound, glaring at the potions. "This is absurd. There's not enough information here."

"It's disguised, 'writ unclear'," Ron said. "There has to be a trick to it. Something's very strange about the whole thing. The wording is all over the place. 'Zealously ignored extremes could kill or render aid? Living seems certain when your receptacle is larger?'"

"I think it means the deadly potions are the medium sized ones," Hermione said. "Zealously ignored extremes, if you only drink the medium size bottles, they could help, or they could kill you, but the large ones are non-deadly."

"But not helpful to narrowing down how to move onward," Ron said. He reread the whole thing, the introduction, the larger riddle proper, then reread it again. It seemed to almost fit a cadence on occasion, but then slipped off into incoherence with no rhyme or reason.

"Beginnings to move onward," he said, "unless you choose to guess. 39 to carry on."

Beginnings. The number counting down, if they started with that first potion. _Beginnings_.

"A!" Ron shouted, the solution coming to him in a sudden flash of insight.

"What?"

"A, the letter." He pointed to the first bottle, then to the first sentence of the clues. "The first letter of the first word is A. There are twenty-four bottles and two blank spots. Twenty-six, exactly enough for the whole alphabet. The countdown only starts if we move the first bottle, the A. What if it's not a coincidence?"

Hermione drew another sketch of the board, but filled in letters on the diamonds instead of potions bottles.

"A. So that means we move the bottle from the A position to the. . . G position." She did so, and the counter ticked down.

Ron looked back up at the riddle. "The next letter is H."

The code ranged all across the board, a twisting path that meandered and looped back on itself, but when the flaming number read zero a single small bottle rested in the front center diamond. Ron regarded it warily.

"This wasn't a deadly one, right?" he asked.

Hermione shook her head tentatively. "I think it's only the medium ones," she said, sounding unconvinced.

The line about angles being safer than round bottles flickered through Ron's mind, but he overrode his concern. He picked up the bottle, which came free without the slightest resistance.

"Well, here goes," he said, and swallowed a gulp of the liquid. Immediately, he felt a chill of power run through him. He hastily set the bottle down and backed away, as the room began to glow around him. "I'm not sure what's happening," he began, and Hermione's worried face vanished in the glare of brilliant flame.

He squinted against the brightness and it faded somewhat. The hallway before him was regal, lit with golden sunlight, and intimately familiar. He stepped forward, awestruck, only to run into a solid smooth surface.

He took a step back, then another. It was the mirror, standing on a raised dais in the middle of an amphithetre-like circular chamber. The architecture didn't match that in the mirror; it was of the same style as the earlier rooms - with multiple thin curling patterns. The hall, still visible in the mirror, was ornamented with thicker smoother patterns, but no less elegant for it.

Black flames blocked the exit, the _only_ exit Ron could see. This had to be the final room.

He approached the flames, squinting to see through without much success.

"Hermione?"

"Ron, where are you?"

"The next room. I think the potion is safe, it moved me here."

"Potions can't teleport people," Hermione pointed out.

Ron might have said the same, had their positions been reversed. It was certainly something that demanded further research.

"Just drink it," he said.

"That's not how potions work," she insisted, but a moment later she appeared before the mirror in a flash of flame.

"Oh," she said softly, staring into the mirror fixedly.

"I assume you don't see the hallway I drew?" Ron asked. Neither Neville nor Harry had told him what they _had_ seen, but they hadn't recognized his drawing.

She shook her head mutely.

"Well, then, I need it back. There's something I'm meant to solve here, and I have to figure out what it is."

Hermione didn't move, just stared into the mirror with that same fixed expression. It reminded Ron uneasily of Neville's reaction. He wished he knew what they'd seen, because it seemed to be affecting them much differently than he himself.

He waited several minutes, but when she still showed no indication of moving he took her shoulders and steered her away. The moment she was facing away from the mirror, her expression stiffened.

"What is it?" she asked, stepping back and eying the mirror warily. "I don't understand."

"Me neither," Ron said, stepping before the ancient magical device and staring into its depths. "But I intend to find out."

* * *

Ron sat before the mirror, staring into it and trying to make sense of it. The mirror showed only the single scene; that golden hallway, which seemed to go on from the mirror as though he could merely step through into it. He couldn't, the mirror was quite solid and resisted any attempts to push in.

The longer he stared at it, the more desperately he wanted to understand. What was the purpose of this place? Why had he felt so sure this was a puzzle for him? All evidence seemed to the contrary.

"We're trapped down here, aren't we?" Hermione said. "We should have kept working on the riddle to find the way back out, instead of rushing in."

"No," Ron said absently. "This is what we were meant to do." He still felt absolutely certain that there was a solution. If he could just figure out what it was.

He tore his attention away from the mirror with greatest difficulty, turned to search the amphitheater. Descending steps led from the entrance, still blocked with black flames that hissed and snarled when he approached. They were long steps, circling the room in its entirety. Ron thought it would make decent seating, if necessary. The ground was flat through the center of the circle, about ten paces between the edge and the slightly raised dais that held the mirror.

For the first time, he noticed that there were markings and glyphs drawn around the dais, spreading out onto the round floor of the chamber.

He crouched down to look at them more closely. A sword, its hilt toward the door and its point aiming directly at the mirror. A lion, drawn half on the floor and half on the edge of the dais, as though it were trying to climb up onto the raised platform. A series of faces were carved around the dais, many looking frustrated, but several appearing triumphant. Ron couldn't help noticing there was a conspicuous blank space just the right size for one more portrait, about a third of the way from the sword to the left.

The patterns laid out across the floor appeared mostly ornamental in nature, flowering vines and grapes and trees, a few other objects interwoven, but all surrounding the central picture of that sword. The more Ron looked at it, the more he felt the blade was important. He knelt beside it, examined the carving closely.

The sword was sized for an adult, and Ron wasn't sure it would be any use to him, assuming the carving was to scale. It didn't seem probable that it would be otherwise. Everything about this room pointed to it being a challenge, a test, and Ron just didn't know what the test was supposed to _be_.

He ran his hand along the raised and depressed carving of the sword, the gem set in its hilt, the tiny words he couldn't make out printed down the blade. Pointing toward a lion, pointing toward the mirror.

Was it something he was supposed to have brought with him? Was it like a key, perhaps? There were rumors about various great magical swords. Maybe one of them unlocked the mirror.

No, he had to assume the solution was within the room itself. Otherwise, they really would be trapped here. He walked around the dais completely, examining the faces carved into its edge, peering at the back of the mirror. Then he blinked in shock. Was that a _doorhandle_?

He stepped onto the dais, ran his hand along the perfectly smooth backing of the mirror, then took a half step and reached for where he felt sure the doorhandle had been. His hand closed on something, invisible and hardly more tangible than air, like grabbing onto particularly thick smoke, but it _held_.

"Hermione, you might want to step away," Ron said. "I don't know what this will do."

She didn't answer for a long moment.

"Hermione?"

"Right," she said hurriedly, and stepped off the dais. She came to stand behind him. "What are you-"

He turned the handle and pushed the mirror open. Hermione gasped as a dark stairway appeared, inside the mirror, leading down.

Ron didn't stop to think about it, but stepped right in. He heard Hermione's hurried footsteps as she followed behind him.

The stairs twisted, going around first in one direction, then another, then straight or curving slightly. They walked down and down, and Ron felt sure they'd come at least as far again as their initial fall.

Ron's legs began to ache. The descent wasn't difficult, but even walking down became strenuous over repetition.

They came to a landing, where three ornately carved seats surrounded a burbling fountain. Hermione rushed to the fountain, and Ron realized that he was incredibly thirsty as well. They'd been going through this mysterious test for hours now.

As soon as they'd drunk their fill, Ron started off down the next set of stairs.

"Can't we rest a few minutes?" Hermione asked, sounding out of breath.

"You can," Ron said, "but I've got to go on. There isn't much time."

"What do you mean?" Hermione asked.

Ron shrugged. He felt the urgency of his search growing by the minute, and remembered all too clearly the mirror vanishing last time he'd been close to understanding. "I have to solve this today, now. I can't put it off."

He started down the steps. Hermione followed.

* * *

Albus Dumbledore had been on the verge of revealing himself and offering his assistance to escape the Gauntlet, but then the Weasley boy had somehow walked into the mirror _from the back_. Albus could hardly believe his eyes. He'd known it was possible -difficult, but possible - to enter the mirror's reflection in certain carefully-arranged circumstances. But he'd never heard of _this_.

He strode up to the device the moment Hermione was out of sight and ran his hands carefully along the mirror's back, but it remained simply the same smooth, dull, metal surface he'd seen every other time. Nothing exceptional about it whatsoever, either magical or mundane.

He crossed back to the front, stared at his reflection. No longer alone, his mirror self stood with three others.

Arianna, grown into her own, standing straight and proud, an aura of power and mature accomplishment surrounding her. If he focused on her, he could almost see her husband and children standing behind her. Aberforth on her other side, unbroken and without the sadness or resignation, a man able to face what came.

Gellert, on Albus's other side, strong and confident, with merriment in his eyes and none of the madness for personal glory. The mirror version of Albus himself, free of the burdens he now carried, gave his original self a smile and wave.

 _The stone is safe. You needn't worry._

He should have walked away, should have turned then and tried to find his wayward students, tried to follow them. But, as so many times before, he elected to stay. Just a few minutes wouldn't hurt.

Arianna looked so beautiful as a grown woman, her wand held confidently, her power completely under her control. He could read the knowledge of a century in her wise face, could so easily imagine her taking one step forward and wrapping her arms around him. Gellert as he should have been, a steadfast friend and supporter, an ally through all the darkness they might have faced together.

Just a few minutes. Then he would find where his students had gone off to.

* * *

The stairway ended at last, in a small antechamber with three doors. One was the exit, for those who wished never to return. One was an exit for those who wanted to try again another time. And between them, the final door. The way onward to the last test.

Ron crossed to it without hesitation and pulled it open. The grand hall before him was nothing like that in the mirror. Wider and longer and higher than the great hall, thick columns of deep red stone lined the way. Tiles of alternating ivory and lighter red stone patterned the floor, polished so smooth they shone, reflecting the red-gold flames that filled the space between the pillars to illuminate the whole room.

And at the far end, peering regally down with its great eyes fixed upon the intruders, sat a true griffin. Ron knew at once that if Hagrid had stood here, big as he was, he'd be completely dwarfed by the massive beast before them. Its feathers were a bright, deep gold. They reflected the firelight into a thousand thousand shimmering sparks that danced across the floor and ceiling at its slightest movement. Its fur was paler, but no less golden or reflective. Its mane and tail were black, the contrast only serving to highlight how brilliantly the rest of it shone.

Ron stared, awestruck. The griffin laughed, a deep and somehow threatening sound.

"You come here completely unprepared? Rushing in without a thought for your safety?" It spread its golden wings, the flashing light nearly blinding Ron, and leapt into the air.

The creature swooped down toward the door. Before he could think how to react, it had reached through the door with one golden-white claw, snagged Hermione and dragged her inside.

Hermione shrieked in surprise as she was lifted into the air, the griffin flying overhead in a slow circle, then returned to its place at the far end of the chamber. It settled back, one leg underneath its prisoner, the other crossed over so she couldn't move. It had her wand arms trapped helplessly at her sides, and however much she struggled to free herself it was no use.

"So, little challenger, what will you do now?" It peered at Ron, its brilliant red-gold eyes mocking him.

"Whatever I have to," he retorted, leveling his wand at it and advancing into the chamber. "Let her go."

"No," said the griffin. "I have been very alone for a very long time. I think I could use someone to talk to. If I let her go, you'll both run off. If I keep her, at least I'll still have one of you."

"Ron, go get a professor," Hermione said, her voice far steadier than Ron would have expected. "I've read about griffins, there's nothing two first-years can do that will be any use. Just do the smart thing and go for help."

The griffin chuckled. "Fearless little thing, isn't she?" It rearranged its hindquarters, seeming to crouch menacingly. "But this isn't about her. It's about _you_. Prove you're worthy, and I'll grant you my authority. Otherwise, you're nothing but a waste of my time."

"Let her go," Ron commanded, taking another step. He was mentally running through his repertoire of spells, trying to find something - anything - strong enough to so much as scratch the griffin, but Hermione was right. They weren't strong enough to fight off a griffin. He ought to go running for help.

But he stood his ground. This was his fight, his challenge, his destiny. He wouldn't let something like a lack of resources stop him.

"Let her go," he commanded again. "If you want someone to stay, I will."

"Ron, no! I'll be fine, just go for help."

"I'm not leaving you here," Ron said, then glared up at the griffin. "Do we have a deal?"

The griffin chuckled. "Yourself for the girl? Why not. One noisy child is much the same as another."

It gave a flick of its foreclaws and Hermione stumbled free.

"I do hope this wasn't some dull-witted attempt at a trick," it commented. "If you try to go back on your word, I'll have to kill you."

"I'm not going to," Ron said firmly, though part of him screamed that honour had no place in a fight, he should run for it now. The griffin was big, too big to fit more than a claw through the door. If they could get even just to the stairway, they'd be well clear of it.

"Ron, don't," Hermione pleaded, tears in her eyes.

"Go," Ron said. "The door to the left is what you want, the other will block you from returning."

"How do you know that?" Hermione asked.

Ron shrugged. It seemed obvious to him.

"Yes, run little girl," the griffin taunted. "Go, leave him to me." It stood, stalking toward Ron with a playful light of malice in its bright eyes.

Hermione glanced back at the door behind them, then jumped in front of Ron and raised her own wand. "No. I won't leave him. _Wingardium leviosa_."

Ron caught on the moment her wand started moving, and joined his own spell to hers. In this, though, even their combined strength was useless. It wasn't simply that the beast was far too heavy to lift, the griffin's feathers seemed to reflect the spell. Much like the keys in the second room, their magic just slid off it.

"Stay if you wish," the griffin said to Hermione. "One can't have too much company, especially when it's so short-lived. But I won't be waiting long. Is this your final decision? Either one of you can go, or you both stay. I'll be sealing that door very shortly."

It prowled close, and for the first time Ron really _felt_ just how outmatched he was. Sitting at the far end of the massive room, the creature had looked big. But now, standing right before him, it towered over them. Easily four times his height, its foreclaws glinting wickedly in the firelight.

Ron was overcome with the urge to turn and run. He felt sure that as soon as their entertainment value wore off, they'd end up as its dinner and nothing they could do would stop it.

"Hermione, run," he said, voice trembling. "There's no point in us both staying. Go."

She wavered, still aiming her wand defiantly up at the beast, but she quailed before its advance. As it stepped forward, she turned and fled.

"Don't try to come back for him," the griffin called after her as she left the room. "By the time you return, it will be far too late for you to do anything."

Hermione stopped just outside the door, turned around with her wand raised as though to return. Before she could make a move, the griffin took one leap, soared over Ron's head, and slammed the door closed with a quick flick of its claws.

A moment later it stepped back from the door, which had been smoothly sealed into the wall. There wasn't so much as a crack to show where it had once been, nor any sound from Hermione beyond.

"There are two others who might open that door from the outside," the griffin said casually, "but neither is _her_. She will choose the wrong exit, confused by her fear and your unclear instructions, and never be able to find this place again, even to lead one who could enter." It chuckled. "Alas, your fate lies with me alone. No interference can save you now."

"Good," Ron said defiantly, as part of him screamed that he was a fool and this was madness. "I have some questions for you."

"Oh? I suppose I have time to answer a few questions of a daring little fledgling like yourself."

"What's the point of all this?"

The griffin laughed, its voice ringing off the ceiling and echoing in the flames, which roared up as though in response.

"It is for you. You, and those like you, who have the potential of greatness. If a true heir arrives, the castle makes a way for them to reach us. In this case, a simple trapdoor in a forgotten corridor. The entrance is always the first test, a leap of faith, diving beak-first into the unknown without hesitation. Those without that daring could never even begin."

"So it _is_ a puzzle," Ron said. "The whole thing, the mirror, the cerberus, the tests."

The griffin stopped moving, tilted its head and peered at him more sharply. "Cerberus? I don't recall a cerberus. No, I'm quite sure, this is your first trial. You haven't already met any of the others. I would have felt their challenges coming into strength, as they will have no doubt felt mine, but none of us is a cerberus."

"It was guarding the trapdoor," Ron said. "Grouchy fellow, I don't think he liked being cooped up indoors."

The griffin leaned down, staring directly into Ron's eyes. He remembered how angry the cerberus had been as he and Hermione held it back, trying to decide whether to jump into the unknown.

"No," the griffin said, turning and pacing back toward the far end of the room. "No, that is not one of us, nor one of our tests." The griffin prowled back and forth for several minutes, and Ron was sufficiently intimidated by its fierce look of concentration that he remained silent.

"I must divine the truth," the griffin said at last. "Wait here."

With a single running leap, it vanished into the flames that connected the pillars. Though Ron felt somewhat less intimidated with it gone, he wasn't nearly as relieved as he'd have thought. The hall seemed too huge now without the griffin to give it context, leaving him feeling very small and very alone.

He hurried over to the wall that had formerly contained the door and rapped on it firmly.

"Hermione, you out there?"

There was no reply. Either she was gone, or the wall was too thick to allow sound in.

Ron paced the hall. He counted the two dozen pillars, each twenty floor tiles apart. The rows were fifty tiles apart. He'd traversed half the room when the griffin returned, bursting through the flame at the opposite side of the room from where it had exited. The sudden sound and flashing light reflecting from its fur and wings made Ron jump.

"It's far worse than I feared," the griffin said. "Another is using the Gauntlet for their own ends. The Final Gate has been twisted into a repository, the webs reshaped into a trap. The trials themselves cannot be changed, but they have been strung with enchantments and wards that do not belong. The Gauntlet is meant to be freely accessed by any who wish to test themselves, not be locked away behind doors and foreign guardians."

Ron nervously backed away as the great beast continued pacing.

"Well, you are the only visitor I'm likely to have in the next several years," the griffin said, its attitude changing quite abruptly. "I will have well sufficient time to contemplate the vandalism of my trials, but your visit here is limited."

Ron cleared his throat. "So, if this place is here for me and those like me, what's the point of it?"

"To test you. First, your courage is tested by the necessity to act without knowledge, then your nerve is tested by the necessity of remaining calm to escape the plant beneath. Second, the determination to continue in the face of frustration and adversity, and the ability to keep going in the face of continued defeat. Third, your courage and chivalry are tested against real opponents, rather than mere environmental concerns."

The griffin raised its beak and glared at the shifting flame. "Someone added another room," it said. "There was no riddle to my Gauntlet, only trials of bravery, strength, and determination. The additional room feels decidedly Roc in origin, I wonder how much twisting it took to slip that one in?"

Ron suddenly remembered the difference in feel, in size, even in architecture. "The potions riddle, that wasn't supposed to be part of this test?"

"Indeed not. It is none of my doing. Yet you solved it, and without resorting to guesswork. It seems the prophecies are indeed coming to their fulfillment."

"Prophecies?" Ron asked, feeling a bit of trepidation. While prophecies generally made for exciting stories, he'd never heard of a prophecy that turned out well for anyone in reality. They tended to be cautionary tales, about either making your own destiny or not trying to fight fate, depending on the teller.

"If you look back far enough, you'll see that everything has been seen before. There are ancient writings which predicted your predecessor's fall. There are those which predict the clash of destinies to come. And there are those which mark out your path, a different one to your friends."

"What do you know about my friends?" Ron demanded hotly.

"I know that by the time you come into your full power, your friends will have faced death as many times as you, but without the safeguards that we place upon our tests. You see, even choosing the wrong potion would not have truly killed you here. Neither Roc nor I wish to slay our visitors, even should they prove unworthy."

"So all the danger is false?" Ron demanded. "I was terrified for Hermione's safety, when there was no risk at all?"

The griffin chuckled, a particularly nasty sound, and Ron wondered at how he'd temporarily slid into complacency. This creature was not friendly, however talkative it may be, and he couldn't afford to think of it as safe.

"The danger was true. Death within the test would mean your permanent expulsion from it. Few mistakes can be erased, made as if inconsequential, and the Gauntlet was never designed to be easy. It is meant to be faced and conquered, not pushed through without consideration for its challenges."

"Big deal," Ron muttered. "So we couldn't try again, why would we want to in the first place?"

The griffin laughed again. "Why _did_ you try in the first place?"

Ron didn't have an answer. The mirror? But it was something deeper. The mirror only showed him. . . something.

"You would have come eventually. And if you'd failed, it would not have gone well for you. I know the fire that burns within you, the desire to achieve greatness. That is how you came this far, and that is how you will go on."

"Gryffindor," Ron said suddenly. "This test, this is all about proving myself a true Gryffindor."

The griffin smiled, and for the first time Ron didn't sense anything sinister or dangerous behind the expression. "Very good, young Heir. You have already passed the Gauntlet, I confess I have been merely delaying your departure for the sake of our conversation. Your final test was to surrender yourself for your friend, which you did without hesitation, and you maintained your honour even then. If you wish to depart, it is my duty to guide you."

"I'm the Heir of Gryffindor?" Ron asked, stunned. The possibility had never occurred to him. He'd been trying to solve a mystery, but this was not the answer he'd expected to find.

"Indeed." The griffin stepped back to where it had first been seated and reached into the flame with one claw. It dragged out a tapestry and unrolled it across the floor. "Choose your reward, and I shall give it to you."

Five images were woven into the tapestry. Centrally, a familiar sword. The same one carved in the Mirror room's floor. Above it, a helm with an open face and a long golden plume of what Ron strongly believed to be griffin feathers. Below the sword, a belt with a lion's head at its buckle. To the right, a monocle, and to the left, an armband. Each was clearly of ancient design, wrought with silver, ornamented with gold or rubies or both.

"What am I choosing?" Ron asked.

"One of the Gryffindor heirlooms is yours by right. I will bring it, from wherever it rests. Such is the power of the Gauntlet, and my purpose as its guardian."

"What do they do?"

"I know not. That is a secret which was never told to me. Choose."

Ron looked over the tapestry and found himself strangely drawn to the belt. "This," he said, placing his hand on its image. "I choose this."

The griffin rolled the tapestry back up and vanished into the flame once more. Again, Ron waited, but this time he felt no need to pace off the room or search for escape routes. Though dangerous, the griffin now could pose no threat to him.

A few moments later it returned, leaned forward to drop the belt into Ron's hand.

The belt was woven of pale ivory metal that reflected like the griffin's feathers, so intricately that Ron could hardly trace a strand. Patterns were woven in, subtly delineated in counter-lines and spirals; the sun, a feather, a flame, a throne, and a sword prominent among them. There were more, layered upon themselves with such finesse that he knew he could spend days staring at it and still not find every hidden meaning.

"The Belt of Gryffindor is yours, young Heir. I would ask you to remain and speak with me at length, but I'm sure you desire haste to return to your companion."

"I don't want her to worry," Ron agreed.

The griffin chuckled, and this time it did not sound even the slightest bit threatening. "I would expect no less from a true Gryffindor. Go, with strength and courage."

The archway reappeared, and Ron walked out into the small dark room at the bottom of the stairs.

He lit his wand, then stepped through the exit door. It led to a long dimly lit corridor that stretched upward in a slight spiral. Walking up it took nearly all his remaining strength, but he arrived at the top without collapsing.

One more door, and he stood unsteadily in Hogwarts proper once again. Night had fallen, the hall dark and silent.

A piercing note broke the silence, a ringing chord like a sunrise singing to catch your attention, and the headmaster appeared in a flash of curling golden fire.

"Mr. Weasley, are you hurt?"

Ron tried to say he was fine, but he staggered and nearly toppled over. Professor Dumbledore caught him and steadied him on his feet. "I think you should visit the hospital wing, straight away," he said.

"Where's Hermione?" Ron asked, waving away the headmaster's concern. "Did she make it out alright?"

Professor Dumbledore chuckled. "Yes, and she was quite distraught about your fate. She kept insisting you were beneath the castle, but couldn't remember how to find you. Just went on about a mirror."

Ron remembered what the griffin had said, about Hermione choosing the wrong door and being unable to return.

"How did you find me?" he asked.

"Fawkes found you, not I," Professor Dumbledore said. "I instructed him to locate you, but for nearly half an hour you were invisible to every device or enchantment. Even the phoenix couldn't find you, wherever you were."

Ron looked around at the perfectly ordinary Hogwarts corridor in which they stood, and found no sign of the archway or tunnel through which he'd exited the griffin's lair.

He glanced down at the belt in his hand, reassuring himself he hadn't just been hallucinating.

"Is the Quidditch match over, then?" he asked.

"The match ended many hours ago," Professor Dumbledore said. "Minerva has been most anxious about you and Miss Granger. I must say, your little adventure took us all off guard. However did you manage it?"

"Hermione was brilliant," Ron said. "I couldn't have done it without her."

"But what, exactly, is it that you did?" Professor Dumbledore asked, peering at Ron with quiet intensity. "I can guess at the first part. You snuck past Fluffy, made your way through each room of tests, and finally arrived at the Mirror. But what happened after that? As far as I could discover, the room with the Mirror is the end. There is nothing adjacent, nothing above or below."

Ron took a breath, the action reminding him of how battered and bruised he was. "I'd rather not discuss it without thinking it over, Professor. I hope you don't mind. And I have to find Hermione. She must be worried sick."

"Miss Granger is in the hospital wing, which is where you should be." He offered Ron his hand, and the moment Ron took it they were engulfed in curling, golden flame. The next moment, they stood in the hospital wing.

"Ron! You're alright! I was so worried."

Madame Pomfrey bustled in, shushing their loud reunion and shoving a potion into Ron's hand as she hustled him to a bed. In no time, he'd been dressed in soft clean bedclothes and lay drowsily in the bed opposite Hermione's, the potion spreading warm calm throughout him.

"Did you find out what the hallway was?" Hermione asked after the adults had left. Her own voice was muted, and he realized just how exhausted they both were.

Ron slowly shook his head. "No. I passed the Trial of Gryffindor, but I never did find the golden hallway."

"Maybe tomorrow," Hermione said sleepily.

They lay in silence for several minutes.

"Thanks," Ron whispered into the darkness. "You were absolutely brilliant down there."

He wasn't sure if Hermione heard. She didn't reply, and within moments he dropped off to sleep.

* * *

The injuries imposed by their trip, when combined with the strain Ron and Hermione had both placed upon themselves by such rapid, extended spellcasting without pause to rest, necessitated a week-long stay in the hospital wing.

Hermione spent nearly the entire time desperately revising for exams, and Ron reluctantly joined her in studying since he'd fallen behind in his single-minded concentration.

The mysterious golden hallway no longer haunted him. And when he did think of it, in memory or his drawings, they all seemed calm and peaceful. No longer did they carry any trace of that burning uncertainty.

The sense of urgent incompleteness that had for so many months drawn him into such tight focus was gone completely. He only thought of it rarely, and then with a sort of reminiscent fondness.

Harry and Neville visited them several times. Once, Harry mentioned in confidence that his scar had begun hurting at seemingly random times throughout the year, growing more painful and frequent as the exams came near.

Hermione was of the opinion that this must be an expression of stress, but Ron wasn't convinced.

"Curses can leave weird after-effects," he explained to Harry. "My uncle Bilius got hit with one just out of school and ever since he's had this one patch on his left arm that goes cold whenever he thinks about mushrooms."

"No way," Neville said, impressed.

Ron nodded confidently. "Curse scars are an unexplored area, as far as our understanding of magic goes. Most people say it's random and leave it at that, but I'm sure you could categorize the reactions to various spells and the people with enough examples."

"Ron!" Hermione exclaimed. "You make it sound like you want to go around cursing people to find out what would happen!"

"No, of course not," Ron hastened to assure her. "I just mean if we could interview all the survivors—"

The discussion lasted long after Harry and Neville departed to return to class, and meandered from topic to topic. By the time they returned to the topic of their homework, evening was beginning to tint the sky outside with deep blue and pale orange.

* * *

They were finally declared well enough to return to classes two days before final exams. Hermione vanished to the library at every free moment, rushing off between classes and hardly taking time to hastily consume meals before whisking herself away to study more. Ron didn't feel the need to do the same, confident that his magic ability was well above first-year average. He wouldn't have a problem passing the tests.

Harry was a greater concern, as was Neville. While each had their strengths, they also had weaknesses which could drag them down. Harry's practical magic scores were regularly high, but the theory behind it seemed to either confuse or just bore him.

Neville's herbology expertise was insufficient to make up for his complete emotional collapse at the sight of Professor Snape, with the result that his potions score was flatly poor at best.

Ron spent most of his own free time trying to help Neville's confidence, but he suspected that would be a longer project than two days.

Harry seemed preoccupied, rubbing frequently at his forehead and squinting suspiciously at whoever happened to be nearby at the time.

"I think it's a warning of danger," he confided on the last evening before exams were to begin. "But I can't guess what."

"Or rain," Ron suggested. "It could be a warning of rain."

Indeed, it did rain the next day, but Harry passed the entire day without so much as a flinch, so Ron conceded that his theory may need more study.

He didn't have time to figure out Harry's scar, though, desperately drilling Neville on potions ingredients and preparation methods in the hopes that he'd be able to at least scrape an acceptable.

* * *

"It's the Philosopher's Stone!"

Ron stared at Harry, uncomprehending.

"I just realized, during that History of Magic test, _that's_ what Hagrid brought to Hogwarts! Someone was trying to steal it from Gringotts, so they brought it here to protect it."

"What?" Ron asked, lost.

"I've been investigating for months, trying to put together the clues, but now. . . I think someone's going to try and steal it."

"Okay?"

Harry smacked his arm. "It's _not_ okay! This could very well be someone working for Voldemort!"

Ron flinched.

"Don't say that name," he said, memories of days where his parents and older brothers went silent and mournful, too many days, too many years. He'd been too young to understand what was happening when the war ended, but the scars it left went deep.

Half his extended family were dead, and even the whisper of that name was enough to bring back the silence and pain. Even Fred and George, who acted as though nothing and no one were sacred, knew better than to joke around about he-who-must-not-be-named. He remembered them trying it once, when they were quite young. They'd never done so again.

"I refuse to be scared of his name," Harry said defiantly. "If there's anything we can do to stop him coming back, we have to."

"What makes you think it has anything to do with You-know-who?" Ron asked warily.

"I talked to a centaur," Harry said.

Ron groaned. "Centaurs are the most useless creatures to talk to. You can't take anything they say at face value, they're always talking about something that will 'surely occur after another dozen moons and two cycles of the summer stars' or some such rubbish."

"No, he was very clear. He said Mars is bright, and that there is someone who has waited long for such a chance as this. He _has_ to mean Voldemort!"

"Stop saying that name," Ron pleaded, images flickering through his thoughts. His mother's tears as she spoke softly about people he would never get to meet. His uncles, his cousins, his grandparents. Black-and-white photographs of brief happiness captured in tiny frames between despair and fear and death.

But Harry wasn't listening.

"If you don't want to help, fine. I'll go by myself."

"Go where?"

"I'm going to find the stone first."

"Why?" Ron asked. "Professor Dumbledore knows what he's doing."

"I have to," Harry said. "Don't you understand? This is _Voldemort_ we're talking about. If he can get this close—"

"Then _you're_ going to stop him?" Ron demanded, slamming the potions book shut. "Harry, stop and think a minute. So what if a centaur said the moon is cold, or whatever. _You_ won't be any harder to get past than _the greatest wizard in the world!_ "

"I am thinking," Harry retorted. "I'm thinking that you don't want to help. Fine. Stay here and figure out how to get another perfect test score. _I'm_ going to stop Voldemort from coming back into power!"

Harry turned and strode away, and Ron stared after him, torn. If there was even a _chance_ he was right. . . but no. Professor Dumbledore _did_ know what he was doing. If, for some reason, the Philosopher's Stone _was_ in Hogwarts, then it would be protected better than anything a first year could penetrate.

He had to drill the potion instructions into Neville before the Potions final the next day. He didn't have time to go chasing off after some wild story.

Ron reached for his textbook, then stilled.

Wasn't that exactly what Harry had thought, when _Ron_ was chasing his own riddle? That _his_ classes were more important than _someone else's_ mystery?

And Ron had even had Hermione to help him.

Did Harry have anyone?

Ron left the potions book where it lay and stood, his mind made up.

 _He does now._

* * *

He found Harry trying to open the forbidden corridor.

"Why are you trying to get in _here_?" Ron asked.

"The Stone. It's in the mirror."

Ron gaped at him. "Really?"

Harry nodded. "I saw it, but I didn't understand what I was seeing at first. It was really confusing at first, until I put it together with Nicholas Flamel and what the centaur told me. Professor Dumbledore tried to put some clever spell on it, but the Mirror isn't happy about it. It wants the Stone out, and it's willing to give it to anyone who asks. If Professor Dumbledore trusts that his spell will hold, he won't be worried about the thief until it's too late."

"But what will we do with it then?" Ron asked. "It's not like a pair of first-years can do better than whatever the headmaster did."

"You got through all the tests fine and you're a first-year," Harry said. "If the thief is any stronger or more capable than you in any way, they already have the advantage. At the very least, this way they'll try to get through and find nothing at the end."

Ron shook his head. "That's not a good enough solution. We need to have a plan before we just go charging in. The _Philosopher's Stone_ Harry! This isn't just some trinket."

Then an idea occurred to him, and he grinned. "I think I know somewhere we can hide it," he said. "And I doubt You-know-who is a worthy Gryffindor, so it should be safe enough there. We'll just have to let Professor Dumbledore know where we put it."

"Where?" Harry asked.

"With the Gryffindor Guardian. The griffin that gave me this belt. It could use flames on the walls like portals, go all over the place. It may not be the perfect solution, but I bet anything that it could hide the Stone way better than you or I."

Harry nodded. "Then let's do it."

Together, they unlocked the door. The cerberus behind was ever so pleased to see Ron again and did its utmost best to bite him in half. Though Harry wasn't quite as quick as Hermione, his spells were just as strong. They levitated it away and swung the trapdoor open.

Ron stared down in surprise. The opening now led directly to the Mirror. He could see, a very short drop below them, the dais and the Mirror standing there, glinting in the faint reflected light from above.

"If it's _this_ desperate to be rid of the thing, it's a good job you decided to come after it," he muttered to Harry. "Ready?"

Harry nodded, and they jumped down into the trapdoor.

They landed in darkness. The lights Ron and Hermione had stuck to the walls the first time around would have run down weeks ago.

"Lumos," Harry whispered, and his wand flared to light. The room was the same as Ron remembered it, but without the brightly-lit potions riddle room or the curtain of black flames everything looked unfamiliar.

He couldn't remember what he had done to open the back of the mirror, but he crossed around behind it anyway, illuminating his own wand.

"Oh!" Harry exclaimed, sounding surprised. "That was easy."

Ron peered around the Mirror, and saw Harry standing with a faceted red stone, veins of dark and silver material wound throughout it.

"We need to get in," Ron whispered to the mirror. "It's important."

"Hey, Ron," Harry called. "There's a door here."

Ron crossed around, just in time to see Harry step into the mirror's reflection and vanish. He stared into the reflective surface, which showed Harry walking down a dark staircase.

Ron tried to follow and encountered a firm, unyielding surface. Whatever he tried, the Mirror remained quite solid. He circled the Mirror again, but the back remained smooth and featureless.

"Harry, can you hear me?" he called. His friend continued going downstairs, occasionally glancing back with a frown, but not as though he'd heard. _He's wondering where I am,_ Ron realized. He kicked the mirror, but that accomplished nothing whatsoever. It didn't even make him feel better.

He considered going back through the rooms he'd crossed the first time, but without some way to fly it seemed pointless. There was no sign that the trapdoor remained in the ceiling; it had vanished the moment they dropped through.

With nothing else to do, he paced before the Mirror and watched Harry's progress.

Harry descended for minutes upon minutes, looking more and more uneasy the farther down he got. Ron could imagine it would be frightening to take the trip alone.

He arrived at the three doors and, without hesitating, opened the central one. It opened, but not onto the vast tiled room where Ron had met the griffin. Instead, Harry entered a familiar hallway. Golden light filled the mirror, spilling in from vast arched windows. Ron felt slightly cheated, but the hall didn't matter as much to him now as it had. It had served its purpose, bringing him here the first time.

Harry proceeded down the hall, then turned a corner and came to a huge vaulted door. It opened at Harry's touch and he entered. But here the Mirror did not show his progress, only the door and nothing beyond.

Ron tried again to enter the Mirror, front or back, but neither worked. He paced nervously, watching the door and waiting. Several minutes passed, then Harry emerged. He was no longer carrying the Stone, and seemed quite a bit less worried than before. He walked back up the hallway, then stepped out of the Mirror and nearly trod on Ron's foot.

"Oh, there you are," he said. "I hid the stone. The big feathery horse said she'd take care of it for us."

Ron wouldn't ever have described the griffin as a 'feathery horse' but Harry often seemed ignorant of wizarding custom and knowledge, so he let it by without commenting.

"Mission accomplished then, right?" Ron asked.

Harry nodded. "So, how do we get out of here?"

Ron considered a moment, then clicked his fingers. "The potions. The riddle said that some of them would send us back."

The moment they stepped through into the previous room, the black and purple flames sprang up on either side, and the flaming riddle wrote itself on the wall behind the table. The potions were back in their initial configuration. Ron swiftly moved through the first thirty-nine moves, then continued more slowly as he mentally worked out the translation. As soon as he made the 40th move, the second number started counting down, and when it arrived at zero he took the bottle from the space.

"It might feel weird, but I'm pretty sure it's safe," he said, offering the bottle to Harry. Harry took a gulp of it, shivered, then passed the bottle to Ron. He took his own gulp, then set the bottle back into its space. Flame surged up around them both, clearing away a moment later to leave them standing on the trapdoor.

The cerberus lay to the side, asleep and snoring thunderously. The two boys hastily exited before it could wake.

* * *

Neville did pass his potions final, but only just. He was trembling and in tears when he added his last ingredients, but the potion didn't explode or turn to tar. Harry did slightly better, and Hermione's came out exactly right. Ron's was somewhere in between - competent enough, but not even close to perfect. Potions required too much individual care and Ron just didn't have the patience for it. Why bother slicing the roots individually when you could chop a whole handful of them at once? It shouldn't matter.

The other exams came and went, with no whisper of rumor or news that He-who-must-not-be-named was doing anything. As far as the world could tell, things went on as they had done for ten years.

Then, two days before their test results were due to come out, whispers ran around the school that Professor Qurirell had died mysteriously the night before. This shocking news was met with a surprising degree of apathy; most of the students just sighed and shrugged off the news entirely. After all, he was the Defence professor, what did anyone expect?

After breakfast, as Ron crossed through a particularly wide secret passageway on his way upstairs, Professor Dumbledore happened to be coming the other direction.

"Mind if I have a word, Mr. Weasley?" he asked quietly.

Ron shrugged. "I'm not in a hurry."

"What did you do with the Philosopher's Stone?"

Ron clicked his fingers. "Oh, I'm sorry, we never told you. I got distracted by finals. Don't worry, Professor, it's safe. We gave it to the griffin Guardian at the end of the stairway under the Mirror. The Mirror was annoyed by it, so we moved the Stone before it could give it to someone else."

Professor Dumbledore nodded. "That explains a great deal. While ordinarily I would feel obliged to tell you off for such blatant interference in that which is none of your concern, in this instance you may well have saved us all. I feel it would be remiss not to grant you some reward. I'd offer you a hundred points for your house, but as you're in all of them. . ."

"Give it to Gryffindor, Professor," Ron said. "It was Harry who insisted we move the Stone, if anyone's being rewarded it should be him."

The headmaster smiled, his clear blue eyes twinkling even in the dimness of the secret passage. "Then so it shall be," he said. "You've done well this year, Mr. Weasley, and I commend you for your friendship, honesty, and good sense."

With a little wave, Professor Dumbledore continued on his way.

* * *

Final exam results were passed out, along with pages informing students that they were not permitted to use magic while away from school. Harry looked increasingly gloomy at the prospect of a magicless summer, and Ron offered to invite him over for a visit which cheered him up considerably.

The leaving feast was a grand affair, up to Hogwarts usual standard of complete excellence, and even their second-place standing in the House Cup Championship wasn't enough to dampen the good cheer around the Gryffyindor table.

Ravenclaw took the Quidditch cup, while Slytherin retained their winning streak for overall points gained. The general opinion in Gryffindor was that their lackluster Quidditch performance in the first game of the year was solely responsible for this reprehensible state of affairs; if Gryffindor hadn't lost by nearly three hundred points, the scores would be much different.

The seeker, Katie Bell, was quite competent, but the new chasers were none the greatest at coordinating their plays. Their teamwork had improved over the course of the year, but at that first match they'd been flattened.

"Forty points down," grumbled Fred as the family gathered to depart. "If we'd managed to hold them off even four goals. . ."

"You trying out next year, Ronnikins?" George asked, clapping Ron's shoulder. "You're decent enough on a broom, you could fill that _Stenley_ 's position as chaser."

Ron grinned. "Oh, I'm trying out for the team next year, but I was thinking something different. Maybe. . . beater?"

Fred and George exchanged shocked looks.

"Our little Ron, try and oust one of _us_?"

"No way."

Ron laughed. "You forget, I'm not just a Gryffindor." He waved the extra sheet of paper that he'd gotten along with his exam results in their faces. "Next year, I'll be playing for Hufflepuff."

* * *

 _Author's Notes:_

 _Well, there it is. Year one of this little experiment. It's quite a different feel from my usual writing, but I had a lot of fun doing this. (Though coming up with that potion puzzle was inordinately difficult, and probably pointless.}_

 _Inheritance Trials is now inactive until I'm struck with inspiration for Year Two. I have all four planned in a general way, but to actually write them will be time-consuming and I've already got more projects than I can possibly keep up with._

 _Thanks for reading! I really appreciate all your support and criticism._


	4. Interlude the First

The last day of term, after the Leaving Feast but before the carriages arrived to transport the students to Hogsmeade station, Professor Dumbledore once again 'happened' to corner Ron alone in a hidden passageway as he headed to Gryffindor tower for some last-minute packing.

"I trust you've had time to fully consider your experiences by now," the Headmaster said, his eyes twinkling as he smiled fondly. "I would hope you feel able to relate your unexpected adventure with the Stone by now?"

Ron felt the command of his presence, the _certainty_ that he couldn't refuse.

He could have resisted, perhaps, had he any reason to do so.

"Certainly, Professor," he said. "What more do you need to know? I'm sure Harry already told you about how we hid the Stone in the Griffin's secret room."

"Ah, now, there is a minor discrepancy there. The creature Harry described was no griffin."

Ron let out a snort of laughter. "I may not be taking Care of Magical Creatures, Professor, but I think I know a True Griffin when I see one. There was no mistaking it."

Professor Dumbledore regarded him gravely, his expression contrasting against his light tone. "Indeed? Then, please indulge me a moment. Describe the griffin for me?"

"It was huge," Ron began, his memory saturated fully with how _big_ and how _gold_ the griffin had been. "Taller than Hagrid by at least as much again. Gold fur and feathers, with a black mane and tail. Golden red wings, as wide as the Great Hall, easily."

"Indeed," Professor Dumbledore said, still smiling. "Would it surprise you to hear that young Mr. Potter described a creature much smaller to whom he gave the stone? A silver-feathered beast who he described as distinctly female?"

Ron stiffened, breathing in sharply. "So. . . we don't actually know who or what Harry gave the Stone to?"

Professor Dumbledore nodded. "That's the sum of it, yes. While I believe the Stone is probably _safe_ , I really must be able to access it. My dear friend Nicholas rather depends upon it, you see."

Ron nodded, his mind racing. "Is the Gauntlet still there?" he asked, looking up hopefully. "I could go back in—"

But Professor Dumbledore was shaking his head. "It vanished during the Leaving Feast," he replied. "The trapdoor and all beneath it is gone, as though it never were. Fluffy has been removed to Hagrid's care outside of the castle, and by next term the Third Floor will be as it ever was."

Ron wished there were room to pace, but the passageway was already fairly tight. He could have taken about three steps toward or away from Professor Dumbledore, but it seemed rude to do so.

"Why are you telling me this?" Ron asked.

"You are in the unique position of having access to many things that ordinary students do not," Professor Dumbledore said. He waved a hand around them. "This passageway, for instance, has never before opened to admit a student. Yet now I've run into you here not only once, but twice. Hogwarts herself is shifting, around _you_. I do not know what it means, but it is clear to me that such a monumental occurrence ought not be ignored."

Ron remembered what the griffin had said, about ancient prophecies coming to their fulfillment. He shivered. Being the plaything of destiny didn't sound very comfortable.

"Thus," Professor Dumbledore continued. "I have determined that you ought to be informed of certain events which may prove important to your future. I believe that you are meant to act for all the Houses in some greater way, but to what end I cannot say."

He thought that he saw Professor Dumbledore's eyes wander to the belt of Gryffindor around Ron's waist, its gold-woven metal shining in the passageway's dim light.

"What do I need to know about?" Ron asked.

"Primarily, what I have just told you. And that should the occasion arise I would greatly appreciate the Stone being returned to my care. I shall, of course, be more careful in its hiding place in future. When the Mirror resisted my attempts, I should have seen at once that Hogwarts was warning me of my course. Instead, I pressed onward. I see now that was a mistake."

Ron felt a strange mixture of gratitude and pride. He'd always known Professor Dumbledore was a great man, but it was different at an impersonal distance. For him to take a personal interest in Ron, to go so far as to confide his own failings? It turned Albus Dumbledore from a distant legend to something else. And, Ron rather thought, something _more_.

"And, beyond that," Professor Dumbledore continued. "I wish to offer you my help should you ever need it. It is my responsibility as your teacher and headmaster to do my utmost to protect you. What you have faced so far, and what you have yet to face, is yours to confront. But that does not mean you need face it _alone_. If ever you need my help, ask."

"Thank you, Professor," Ron said sincerely, nearly overwhelmed by having been singled out so.

He'd always faintly dreaded going to Hogwarts, imagining himself struggling to stand in the shadow of all his older brothers, but this first year he'd found it quite the opposite. It was strangely freeing, the ability to be himself and be seen _as_ himself.

People were far more interested in him as the 'four-house boy' than as 'Fred and George's little brother'. More likely to ask him for help with homework, than if he was going to be the next Charlie. And now the Headmaster, _Albus Dumbledore_ himself, was making a point of offering his _personal help_.

Ron didn't care what Harry said. Being famous was rather brilliant.

"Do you remember anything else from your journey beneath the Mirror?" Dumbledore's quiet voice cut through his thoughts, bringing him back to the present.

Ron described the hallway beneath the school, the stairs leading down to it, the little landing with the fountain, and the three doors. Somewhat out of order, but he got to them all eventually. The whole time he spoke, Professor Dumbledore nodded and regarded him solemnly, clearly paying careful attention to the whole account.

He glossed over much of the griffin's conversation with him, though; that felt a bit too private. He also neglected to explain where he'd gotten the belt, but Professor Dumbledore merely nodded without comment. If he noticed the evasions he was polite enough, and respectful enough of Ron's decision not to share the full story, not to ask.

"Thank you, Mr. Weasley," Professor Dumbledore said, nodding in thanks. "You have made several things quite clear to me. Do not be surprised if you find similar opportunities during the coming years. Act with care, but remember what you learned here. Whatever your house of the day, you will always be a true Gryffindor."

* * *

Word of his imminent transfer to Hufflepuff had spread, and he'd had as many Gryffindors pleading with him to stay longer or wanting to shake his hand or get his signature before he went as he had Hufflepuffs suddenly wanting to get to know him before they all separated for the summer. With all the interruptions, it had taken him nearly an hour just to move halfway down the train to where his friends sat.

"He drank the wrong potion," Harry was whispering as Ron slid into the compartment. Everyone else leaned forward to hear. "Got completely addled. But then instead of trying to carefully figure out the rest from that, he just tried to brute-force the puzzle by drinking _all_ of them, one by one."

"Who?" Ron asked, taking a seat beside Seamus.

"Professor Quirrell," Harry said. "That's why he's dead. He tried to do the tests like you did, but he failed."

Ron frowned. "The griffin said the tests wouldn't hurt anyone."

"She told me he proved himself completely unworthy," Harry said, shrugging. "And I got the feeling she didn't approve of him trying at all."

"I still can't believe _we_ solved it," Hermione muttered to Ron, flipping through her notes. "It's practically impossible to solve."

Ron made a noncommital sound. It had been an intuitive leap, not anything that the riddle itself had made clear, but the solution felt correct the moment he thought it.

"Why didn't you tell us sooner?" Seamus was asking Harry.

"I wasn't allowed to, dummy," Harry said, grinning. "Professor Dumbledore said I wasn't to tell anyone at school. Well, now we're not at school anymore, are we?"

Hermione gaped at him.

Ron patted his shoulder encouragingly. "That's the spirit, Harry!"

"No, Ron," hissed Hermione. "You shouldn't be encouraging him to break his word."

" _I_ don't mind," Seamus said eagerly, leaning closer to Harry. "What else did Professor Dumbledore tell you?"

Harry shrugged a bit uncomfortably. "He didn't _tell_ me exactly. Harmony told me more than he did. He just made me promise to keep it quiet at school." He looked a bit panicked for a moment. "So, none of you can tell anyone else, alright?" he said hastily, looking from Hermione to Neville to Ron to Seamus.

"I promise," Hermione said at once, looking sternly at the others.

Neville nodded solemnly.

"Sure," Ron said, though he wasn't entirely confident in his ability to keep that promise. His brothers had a habit of getting _anything_ out of _anyone_.

"Of course," Seamus said, waving it away. "Who's Harmony?"

"She's the griffin in the Mirror," Harry said at once, smiling reminiscently. "She said she wasn't expecting me to come so soon, but promised to look after—" Harry broke off and glanced guiltily at Ron, as though unsure how much to say in front of Seamus. He hadn't really been part of their team, though he seemed quite friendly with Harry.

Ron hadn't told anyone except Hermione about their trip to save the Philosopher's Stone. He wasn't sure if Harry had, but from the looks of it he hadn't and was trying very hard to think of a way to evade the truth.

"Yeah," Ron said, saving Harry from having to decide. "I don't _feel_ like I need looking after, but I certainly won't say no to a Griffin. They're very powerful and _very_ rare, so who am I to complain?"

Harry smiled gratefully. "So Harmony promised to look after us and said she was looking forward to seeing me again someday. That was when she told me about Professor Quirrell. She said he, unlike me or Ron, was _not_ worthy to enter the Trials, and that he had performed quite poorly for someone from the Roc's house."

Ron was, despite himself, quite impressed. "And you kept that quiet this whole time?" he asked.

Harry grinned sheepishly. "Well, I wasn't going to go against Professor Dumbledore in his own school."

Ron imagined Professor Dumbledore, his perpetual calm, the confidently sedate way he walked, and how he exuded an aura of complete control. That old, thin, almost frail-looking frame concealed the greatest magical power of any living wizard in Europe. Even when he was doing something mischievous or mad, he did so with such an air of conviction that some people never even recognized his humor for what it was.

Ron nodded. "Wise decision."

* * *

Albus Dumbledore stood by his window, Fawkes trilling gently behind him. The phoenix song soothed him, helped relieve some portion of the weight that he carried, but it was not enough to prevent his thoughts racing around each other relentlessly.

These days, destiny seemed to be running in pairs.

Two potential prophesied children, eleven years ago. And now two potential Heirs, attending at the same time. _And long before that, two potential lords of magic,_ his memory unhelpfully supplied.

His face wrinkled in a brief frown, as his thoughts drifted for a moment to another old man, alone in his own tower room, but in very different circumstances. And how much more different those circumstances could have been, if either of them had made different choices.

He forced his thoughts away from the past, bent his mind again toward the present and future. He had learned much this year, and suspected more.

Quirinus had fallen victim to a trap never meant for him, his Ravenclaw curiosity driving him to do foolish things. Why, Albus wondered, hadn't he been smart enough to simply flee? He had never been even slightly Gryffindor in temperament, and especially since his return he'd been more afraid than ever. Why had he chosen to test himself against the _Gryffindor_ gauntlet?

And how was it that he had fallen to the sole Ravenclaw test within it?

Albus dearly wished that he could have returned, himself. So much could be answered if he could simply speak to the Griffin himself.

But though as Headmaster of Hogwarts he could order the Mirror to show itself to him, no amount of coaxing or threatening could convince it to allow him passage through it. He had already undertaken his own Trials, and the Mirror would not forget.

He closed his eyes a long moment, listening to the phoenix song, and thought it sounded somewhat like a lament. But the more he concentrated on it, the more it seemed to be building up in intensity. Subtly, the rhythm behind the notes rising and increasing, but so slowly that if he hadn't been listening so intently he would have never noticed.

 _Not a lament,_ he realized _. A warning._

But a warning of what?

* * *

 _Author's Notes:_

 _So, turns out this project wasn't quite ready to be put on the back burner. Have an interlude. :)_

 _If I may ask one great favour of y'all? If you happen to know your Hogwarts house, could you be so kind as to leave a comment (or PM) with what you consider your house's most important or best attributes/ability/etc? Or how they would react in a crisis, or ways they interact with others? Especially Hufflepuff at present, since that's the Year Two focus, but any would be useful!  
_

 _I stuck with mostly canon type stuff for Gryffindor, since they have the largest representation, but for the others it would be incredibly helpful to see how other houses perceive themselves in reality. Don't be afraid to stray from the canon definitions if it helps, I'm looking for honest detailed assessments. Since I'll need to be writing content for the less-developed houses, the more the better._

 _Second question: I've been sort of planning Voldemort to be a low-key kinda side thing that happens more or less off-screen, with Harry off having his own adventures while the focus stays mostly on Ron. Will it feel weird as an HP fic if the main POV protag has very little to do with taking out Voldemort? I still have plenty of time to change the plan, such as it is, if needed._

 _As always, thanks for reading!_


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